


Bar Hopping

by Eoraptor



Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/F, F/M, Gen, Humor, No Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-04-05 02:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19039363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eoraptor/pseuds/Eoraptor
Summary: It's been 10 years since high school. Time has come for class reunions, family reunions, and personal revelations.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Rated T for Teen. Kim Possible and related characters ©2002-2007, 2019 The Walt Disney Company. This is a not-for-profit fan work and I claim ownership only of the concept.

“I’m telling you, Cambridge ruined you, man…” Ron complained as he and Felix sat at the table, sipping on their respective beers.

 

“And I’m telling you,” Felix rolled his eyes roundly, “It _civilized_ me.”

 

“Whatever…” The blonde man snorted, “Warm beer is an atrocity unto God, man, and the great monkey.”

 

Monique joined them at the table a moment later with her own beer, catching the tail end of the conversation, “I’m with Ron on this one, Wheels… God granted us refrigeration for a reason.”

 

“Speaking of what God granted us… on your eight o’clock Ron-man…” Felix looked pointedly in the appropriate direction.

 

Rolling chocolate eyes, Monique sighed and rapped her finger on the gold band on Felix’s left ring finger, “Ahem?”

 

“Hey!” he defended himself with affront, “I have a Latin goddess at home… doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the art from time to time.”

 

“Men.” She huffed derisively. “Doesn’t matter if they are fifteen or fifty… all the same.”

 

Ron, meanwhile, was transfixed. The young woman in question had a perfectly heart-shaped bottom, which was born well in her low-riding jeans. Just above the waist, in the exposed bare of her lower back, was some odd sort of rough symbol, reminiscent of Pi but not quite that, bracketed by barbed wire decorations on each side. The rest of the way up was concealed by a white tank-top or tee under a short-style brown leather riding jacket.

 

“Oh jeeze,” Monique’s eyes finally went to the woman in question after noticing Ron’s hypnotic stare. “Another redhead… Ron, if you had any more of a type, you’d be… what’s that word Felix, for when you plug something in and it just starts up?”

 

“Plug-and-play,” He smirked, but nodded in agreement.

 

Trying not to feel ignorant at the very basic term, Monique just sighed into her amber beer, “Yeah, that. Seriously…”

 

“I’m going in for a closer look…” Ron took his Kirin lager in hand, pounded it down, and made his way to the bar for an apparent refill.

 

“Boy never changes,” the dark-skinned girl lamented, “Half the time he thinks he’s Don Juan de Middleton, and the other half the time he trips on his own tongue.”

 

“So you’re saying you want to see which happens?” Felix grinned conspiratorially.

 

“Duh…”

 

They both watched with morbid curiosity as the supposed ninja made his way to the bar. It was obvious to anyone even glancing in his direction that his eyes were glued to her lower back and butt.

 

So much so that he bumped into the bar rail instead of stopping at the appropriate distance.

 

Monique and Felix both clapped their hands to their faces.

 

By the time they looked up, Ron was on his way back with his refreshed Japanese beer and an apparent smile.

 

“Report?” Felix arched a brow at the quick return.

 

“Natural redhead, five foot four inches tall, one hundred twenty pounds of muscle, age twenty three; just turned last month, an Aries born in the year of the Rooster, so couldn’t be more cock-sure if she tried. Mixed accent, southern roots but inter-mountain west upbringing. Small B-cup, no evidence of a brassier, and perky. ” He began listing off what he had observed in maybe thirty seconds as though it were wrote on a statistics card. “A few freckles on the cheeks from working in the sun, murder-me red matte lipstick from Club Banana, smokey rose eye shadow just dusted on to hint at color. She has a gold Ankh hanging from three links in her navel, no sign of a ring, sterling silver studs and a sterling silver and turquoise cuff in her ears, no piercings under the clothes or in the mouth, probably has ink on her left arm under the jacket. Wears sunglasses or specs a lot based on the faint notch in her ear lobes. And those eyes…. Man those eyes!”

 

“Okay baby boy, that’s just creepy…” Monique gave Ron a sideways glance at the assessment.

 

“It’s the ninja training,” Felix surmised as he nursed his beer, “When he came to Cambridge, he could size up anyone in the room in five seconds flat. Seriously… it turned into a pub game. I came away with almost two hundred Pounds that night!”

 

Neither Felix nor Monique knew that Ron actually _was_ a ninja, just that he had spent a lot of time in Japan over the past ten years and had come away with odd new skills. So they decreed it must be some sort of secret ninja training.

 

Sighing, Monique took a swig of her beer, “Alright, Boy, what about _those eyes?_ ”

 

“Moonstone…” he purred a bit, “Not quite blue, not quite green, not turqouise; bright, energetic, observing, almost as if she were hunting something.”

 

The African girl rolled her eyes and palmed Felix a fiver, “Green-eyed redhead, you were right. Baby Boy is totally plug-and-play.”

 

“Hey!” the blonde man frowned at the assessment, “I said moonstone, not green!”

 

The three friends chuckled together over their glasses.

 

“So when is our fearless leader supposed to get here?” Felix looked at his watch in consideration.

 

“She was supposed to be already,” Monique supplied, looking around the bar for the twenty-eight year old redhead. “Tenth High School reunions only come around once.”

 

“I know,” The man on wheels offered as he nursed his beer, “Zita is so frazzled between the planning committee, and the kids, and her game’s release cycle… I had to promise to drink enough for the two of us.”

 

“Suuuure you did,” Ron rolled his eyes. “But you know KP… if there’s a cat that needs out of a tree, she’s there. She probably paused to stop a bank robbery or something.”

 

“Yeah, that her wife robbed,” Monique rolled her eyes, soured on that particular fiery relationship long ago.

 

“Heeeey,” Ron cautioned, playing mediator, “Be happy she found someone. I was beginning to think it would never happen for her. Besides, said wife has been behaving herself.”

 

The mocha colored woman huffed and rolled her eyes, “as long as she doesn’t bring her.”

 

The blonde man sighed deeply at that, “No, she won’t… The Wife doesn’t like socializing with us mortals, you know that.”

 

“Good.” Monique snorted.

 

“So, you gonna make your move on Miss Moonstone?” Felix moved to change the topic, shooting his eyes at the shapely jeans.

 

Ron looked at his beer, which was not empty enough to warrant another trip, knowing he didn’t want to get really hammered the night before the reunion; magical powers or no. Then he looked at the deep auburn hair in consideration for a long moment.

 

“I dunno, she’s 23, I’m 28… We probably don’t even like the same music…”

 

“Ron,” Monique countered, smirking, “NO ONE likes the same music as you. Why should you let that stand in the way of a date?”

 

“What would I say?” he complained, suddenly uncertain of himself.

 

“Oh cheese and rice,” She grabbed Ron up by the arm and dragged him to the bar. Then she briskly tapped on the shoulder of the leather jacket, speaking above the din of crowd and music, “My friend here likes your ink. Wants to know what it means.”

 

“Oh?” She turned. Then she grinned broadly on seeing the blond young man, “Do ya now?”

 

Monique left the two of them to their own devices and returned to the table, “God that boy is so clueless sometimes. Things never change. But he was right about her eyes, they’re almost haunting.”

 

“Now, let’s watch and see how he does with Miss Moonstone,” Felix grinned over the lip of his beer as he glibly eyed the pair.

 

Giving him another coy and assessing grin, Miss Moonstone turned around to display the odd bifurcated symbol, “It’s the cuneiform for Isatum, or fire. The barbed wire is jus’ ta make it mine. Ya like?”

 

She gave her hips a slight sway to accentuate the split symbol while looking over her shoulder at Ron. “And here’s a lil trick; touch it.”

 

That seemed a bit forward, even for a bar room flirtation, and the blond man arched an eyebrow in disbelief.

 

“Ah go on, I promise, it won’t bite or nuthin’.” She held still now.

 

Reassured that he had permission at least, Ron reached out an index finger and touched the word for fire. “What the-? It’s hot?”

 

It was clearly several degrees above body temperature, which Ron verified by moving his finger away from the ink slightly, feeling the drop to a standard ninety eight point six. “Okay, that’s cool!”

 

She turned around and inched up the tail of her top slightly, thrusting out her taught abs to him, “Now, try ma Ankh.”

 

Confused, but game for anything that involved touching such a pretty girl; Ron again extended his index finger and touched the golden ornament dangling from Miss Moonstone’s navel. A slightly reddish spark leapt from the gold symbol to meet his finger, and he felt a warmth spread through him that was unconnected to his embarrassment. “Whoa!”

 

“Life energy,” She grinned, smoothing her shirt and jacket back into position. “But I wouldn’t advise touching Old Crow on mah arm, trickster Gods ken be pesky…”

 

“Oh, I know all about trickster gods,” Ron grinned and tapped on the silver watch on his left wrist.

 

With a bluish flush, it melted and quickly snaked across to his right hand, forming an ink pen. He clicked the stem the transformation was reversed; the metal ink pen liquefying and flowing back through the air to his left wrist.

 

“Wowee!” She cooed in surprise at the display, “Let me guess, an ancient mystical weapon handed down through tha centuries?”

 

Ron’s blond eyebrows went up in surprise, “That is… surprisingly accurate. How did you…?”

 

She tugged the left hip of her jeans down slightly, revealing tan lines in her bronze skin. Just below the daring pale streak of skin was a carefully shaped… scar. A brand which looked a bit like a lopsided boomerang, “Ah got one of those too, but mine dun change shape or size; and I think they might frown on me poofin’ a glowing red twelve-inch blade inta’ existence in a bar full o’ people.”

 

Ron moved his thumb up, touching the skin just below the welted mark. Indeed, through his connection to tai sheng pek kwar, he could feel the presence of something hidden in the mark.

 

And then his hand was viciously smacked away, and not by Miss Moonstone.

 

“Ron! What the heck do you think you’re doing?! That’s my cousin!!!” Kim Possible had materialized next to the pair at the bar, and she didn’t look pleased in the least.

 

She was in a black tee-shirt top which had an intricate cutout and stone around the throat, and a pair of olive slacks ending in her stylish-yet-functional black boots. Her long carroty red hair was tied back in a loose ponytail, exposing the glare of her green eyes all the more.

 

She also smelled faintly of smoke, and there was a smudge of soot on the right side of her forehead. Obviously, he’d been right about her stopping off to avert some crisis somewhere.

 

“C- Cousi- Cousin?” he looked between the lighter and darker redheads in rife confusion. He thought he would remember any relative of Kim’s who looked like _that._

 

Miss Moonstone grinned and giggled, extending her hand to him, “Ah figured you all probably didn’t recognize me. Seein’ as you haven’t seen me since Ah was ‘bout twelve. Joss Possible.”

 

Ron fumbled backwards to grab a swivel stool, feeling flush from the realization. Joss was smirking a bit coyly. Kim was trying to laser him to death with her eyes. He could almost feel a red heat welt forming on his forehead where she glared, and his brain felt ready to explode.

 

Back at the table, Monique and Felix exchanged a glance.

 

“Damn, just when it was getting interesting.”

 

“She looks hot.”

 

“Yeah, why do you think Ron went over there?”

 

Monique rolled her eyes and snorted, “I mean Kim. She looks POAAH.”

 

“Translation?”

 

“Pissed Off As All Hell.” The dark skinned woman supplied, sipping on her beer and watching the trio over its rim.

 

“Well, we know she’s not Red’s girlfriend, so, who is she?”

 

“My cousin Ron! My Little Cousin!”

 

“Oooooooooh.” Kim’s voice was raised enough now for them to hear at their table, and both eavesdroppers winced. “Ouch.”

 

Ron, of course, said exactly the wrong thing to that; and both high school alums ducked their heads in shame back at the table. They had to admit they were impressed with Kim’s restraint when she didn’t slap him. Sometimes they wondered how Ron had survived Kim in the first place.

 

Then they recalled Kim’s wife to the equation and they wondered if this wasn’t a third or fourth generation improved Ron Clone and that the original was long gone.

 

Stranger things had happened in Middleton after all.

 

Back at the bar, Kim had managed to lower her voice a bit, but was still scowling. “Ron… Seriously? Fondling Joss?”

 

“Fondling?!” his voice gave a squeak which it rarely did these days. “Ahem, Fondling? J- Joss was just showing me her tattoos.”

 

“And how many times have I ever had to tell you to look with your eyes, not your hands?” the fuming redhead glared daggers.

 

“Hey Now!” Joss frowned, “Ah gave him permission to touch me. Told ‘im twice even.”

 

“Stay out of this, Joss.” She snipped off curtly, her ire still focused on Ron for the moment.

 

“Ah will not!” Now it was Joss’s voice that was rising. “Ah am not some lil kid, Kim!”

 

To prove it, she slammed back a shot of some dark liquor that had been sitting before her on a monogramed bar napkin. “Ah am a college freakin’ graduate, an’ Ah won’t be told who I let touch me, not even bah you!”

 

Kim was not prepared for the fiery response. So, in typical Kim-fashion, she ignored things she couldn’t process, continuing to focus her ire on her partner, “Seriously Ron… I know it’s probably been a while since you had a date, but Joss?!”

 

“KP, really, I was just-,” Ron held up his hands, trying to defend himself. “I mean, come on, she said it herself, she’s a big girl now. And I didn’t know, really who…”

 

“Oh?” Suddenly the heroine turned, refocusing her glare on her cousin, “Is that true? Were you messing with him? Joss, you know how simple he is.”

 

“Simple? Come on KP, that’s a little har-,” his compliant was met with a flattened talk-to-the-hand palm.

 

“Jocelyn,” Kim frowned darkly, “I’ve heard from people about you and hanging around in bars. Don’t tell me this is what you get up to?”

 

“Or what?” the younger ginger glared right back, her lips curling into a scowl, “You’ll tell ma pa on me? Ah ain’t no little girl, Kim. Not no more. Ain’t it you who’s always preachin’ about doing anything and embracing your power and identity?”

 

“KP, maybe we should all just sit down and-,”

 

“Ever since you got that damned fire tattoo,”

 

“Isatum”

 

“WhatEVER.” The redhead growled, pointing at her younger cousin, “You have been getting way too big for your britches.”

 

“Too big for my...?” the auburn-haired girl sputtered, “I’ll have you know Ah’ve seen more shit’n you’d believe! Lycans and Vampyrs and Wendigo an’ stuff they ain’t even got English names for!”

 

Back at the table, Monique and Felix could see that this was rapidly turning from a spectacle into a disaster. Monique stood up and Felix rolled backwards, and they started to cross the floor to prevent bloodshed.

 

“Ya know what?” Joss glared, looking around herself and then back at Kim, “Ah finished mah drink. Ah don’t have to stand here and take this, and neither does Ron. Come on, Ron.”

 

She spun on the heel of her riding boots and stormed away.

 

Ron looked between the two gingers. After a moment, he decided that Kim was too hostile to hear reason right now for whatever cause. And she was in the wrong and totally harsh too. Joss was _only_ hostile, and probably the safer one to be around anyway. He didn’t want to spend the rest of the evening trying to calm his best friend down or further explain himself, honestly; so he circled around to the table, swallowed the last of his beer and grabbed up his coat, and followed Joss out of the bar.

 

“Did he just- Did _SHE_ just- Gragh!” Kim clenched her hands at her sides in indignant frustration.

 

“Whoa whoa, Red,” Felix rolled up to one side of her, careful not to touch the seething redhead lest he draw back a bloody stump, “Easy on the Klunkin mating calls…”

 

“Yeah, Boo,” Monique appeared at her other side, “count to ten, go to your happy place, imagine puppies and kittens, deep breaths…”

 

**_ -BH- _ **

**__ **

Outside, Joss was building up a good head of steam as well, ranting as she stormed down the sidewalk. “Of all tha nerve! Ah’m getting too big for MY britches?! All Ah’ve ever done is follow in her footsteps! Try ta be as good as her! Find tha hero inside! An I finally found mah own path, and _now_ it’s too much?!”

 

“Joss, wait up!” Ron hurried after her, “We left my designated driver in there, I think… But, I… don’t think Kim will want to drive me back to my hotel now and I can’t go home because my old room is now Hana’s dojo and-,”

 

“Y’all can bunk with me,” She snorted as she found her ride, waving a key-fob at it and causing the headlight to blink and chirp in response.

 

Given the boots and the jacket, Ron found himself unsurprised that it was a motorcycle. The only odd thing was that the gas tank was blood red, and shaped vaguely like a horse’s head, including two angry red “eyes” glaring over the headlight.

 

“But Joss, you’ve been drinking, and-,” He hedged, wondering if this wasn’t a bigger mistake than staying with a milk-curdling Kim.

 

“Oh, now don’t you start,” She turned on him and growled, “It was one shot. Given my body mass an’ diet, tha’s not enough to impair me, legally or functionally. ‘Specially after only five minutes! Taint even in my blood yet!”

 

Holding up his hands, he sighed, conceding to her on the point, “But… helmet? Colorado is a helmet state you know.”

 

Rolling her eyes, she rapped her knuckles on the seat. It hinged upwards and backwards, revealing two blood-red domes, which ascended from within to meet her hands.

 

Ron was beginning to detect a theme. Much as Kim now wore purple and black, her cousin was into crimson and chrome. He took the proffered helmet and waited for her to mount up first.

 

A thought stopped him as he watched her rest her foot on a peg. Her earrings were silver and chrome’ish, but her navel piercing was pure gold, which he indicated with his eyes, “Wait, isn’t it like, some kind of fashion sin to mix gold and silver?”

 

“What are you, the fashion police?” She gave him a cockeyed smirk as she threw a leg over the bike’s saddle; some of the heat leaving her voice.

 

“No, but I’ve met them,” He grinned a bit. “Got half-credit for having a pocket-sized pet.”

 

She rolled her eyes and laughed a bit, “Ah knew I liked you fer a reason. Come on, let’s git outta here before Kim really does call mah dad.”

 

Ron hopped on behind Joss and gripped the underpinnings of the seat. Joss reached back and grabbed his wrist, “Don’t be a dip, that’s not safe. Or aren’t ya man enough to hold onto a _little girl_?”

 

Wincing at the call back to the argument and the irritation in her voice, Ron did as instructed and wrapped his arms around Joss. He was rather pleasantly surprised by how firm she was. Not wiry or hard, but certainly in excellent shape.

 

They made it a few blocks and came upon four firetrucks in the street responding to a call. Remembering the sooty streak and the smell on Kim, the blond assumed this was what had held her up. Looking around, though, he realized they had come down a one-way street, and now were basically struck by the laws of traffic.

 

He tapped on the back of Joss’s helmet as he leaned around her a bit, “Now what? Can’t turn around.”

 

“Now, we go off road,” Joss laid her palm on the equine fuel-tank. A moment later Ron was upset from his seat, because the bike was transforming.

 

The two large wheels split at one point, and folded up into wedged triangles, before shrinking away into one of their corresponding struts. The struts themselves spread apart and lengthened slightly, gaining new joints along their span. The seat beneath Ron jerked upwards beneath him, and he found himself slid up against Joss’s back more intimately. Finally, looking over Joss’s shoulder, he watched the gas tank rise up over the front headlight and tighten together into a true skull; revealing that this was, in fact, some new generation of Robot Horse.

 

“Ooof, sorry ‘bout that,” the auburn-haired girl looked back over her shoulder at him as his weight nearly pushed her up into the saddle horn which had appeared, “Ah keep forgettin’ that the seat on the bike is for two, but tha saddle is fer one.”

 

“I’m not complaining,” He gave a goofy grin at their awkward predicament, “But how does this help us? It’s still a one-way street with no outlet.”

 

“Fer motor vehicles, yeah,” She shook her head slightly, “But horses are a different matter. Watch.”

 

She twisted the throttle on the handlebars, which now emerged from the horse’s shoulders above a chest-mounted headlight, and it began forward at a steady gait. They got quite a few looks from those not busy fighting the fire, but nobody tried to stop them.

 

The mechanical steed navigated the chaos quite easily, stepping over hoses and around people, and soon they were on the other side of the situation. Joss twisted her wrist further and the steel stallion advanced from a trot to a gallop, easily matching the speed of its motorcycle form. Ron looked down, expecting to see sparks from steel hooves on concrete roads, but the ride was surprisingly smooth and quiet.

 

Following his eyes, the pilot grinned, shaking her head, “Hooves are polymer composites. An’ there’s urethane bushings in the knees. Good for ‘bout fifty thousand miles.”

 

“Your own work?” Ron still had to speak up a bit over the clop-clop of the hooves, plastic or not.

 

“Pa and I collaborated on her.” Joss confirmed as they galloped amongst the traffic on the freeway, easily keeping the highway speeds. “Not still sceered of robot horses are you?”

 

“It’s a little late to ask!” he had to hold on a bit more tightly with the up and down motion of the galloping steed, but for the moment, wasn’t averse to it.

 

Besides, even if he was still scared of mechanical steeds, the idea of being around a nuclear Kim Possible was a lot more frightening.

 

The ride on the horse turned out to be shorter than expected. Ron was surprised that Joss was staying not at the Possibles’, but at a motel on the south end of town. As he got off the bike/horse, he looked around.

 

Joss apparently interpreted the look, shaking her hair loose as she removed the helmet, “With Kim in town, we all planned a kina family reunion. But tha Possible house is full up, so a few of us made other ‘rangements.”

 

After a moment, the blond nodded at that. Kim’s family was not big, but the rebuilt family residence was also not that big. He could just imagine trying to sleep Aunt June’s rather large frame on the guest couch.

 

“Man, I hope KP cools off by tomorrow,” he lamented as he stood awkwardly on the sidewalk. “I wish I knew what set her off like that. It was like… Whammo and she was off to the races on me.”

 

Joss dismounted her mechanical steed and again touched the flat part of the head/fuel-tank. The mech-quine contracted and folded downwards until it was once again simply a stylized motorcycle. “Ah dunno, but whatever it is, I dun appreciate bein’ on the receiving end of it. Ya’ll wanna drink?”

 

Ron followed her to her room on the first floor of the motel, and inside after she unlocked it. The place wasn’t exactly high class, but it was clean; with a single bed, a bathroom, and the standard minifridge and coffee maker.

 

Joss busied herself with a duffle bag at the foot of the bed, and produced a bottle of brown drink with a green and gilded label. Ron admired the view provided as much as was polite or prudent without getting caught.

 

Feeling a bit concerned about how he’d get back to his own hotel if Joss was about to imbibe, Ron raised a hand in concern. Then he remembered that the robot horse was just that, a robot. Much like Kim’s car, it was probably capable of taking him home on its own if called to it.

 

Still, he didn’t want to be getting smashed and hung over the night before the reunion. It would be bad enough by itself… but if Kim was already feeling touchy, his showing up burned by demon rum would not improve the situation. He took one of the plastic disposable cups from atop the minifridge and got some water from the tap instead. He might have super powers, but an iron liver was not one of them, and he’d already had two large beers in a half hour.

 

“So, scotch huh?” He attempted some small talk. Joss was mostly a stranger to him. A hot one, but still…

 

She poured herself a shot into what looked like a canteen’s drinking cap, and nodded after she slung it back, letting it rest in her mouth and studying him. After swallowing, she smiled, “Yup. Beer gives me headaches, an’ I dun like vodka. An’ as long as I limit mahself to the expensive stuff, I can’t afford to git into trouble with it.”

 

Ron scratched the top of his head at that. Joss was barely out of college. In his experience, personally and as a ninja and world saver, it took longer than that to develop a taste for anything other than that which could be had at a gas station, right?

 

Curious, he looked at the green and gold bottle on the dresser. “’Bainne Màthair’? Why does that sound… familiar? Like I’ve heard it before…”

 

Giggling, Joss picked up the bottle and handed it to him. “Turn it ‘round an’ read.”

 

The glass of the bottle was thick and heavy, and he realized there was a residue around the lip, the remnants of a real wax seal. Ron turned it round and read the back. The first thing he noticed was a secondary duty tag, indicating that it was imported rather than bottled in the states. He read the golden writing on the bottle, and realized why the name was so familiar. “Distilled on Karne Matal, ancestral home of Laird Angus Killigan… Oh yeah! Duff Killigan opened a brewery on his island!”

 

“Distillery,” Joss corrected with a smirk, “Ya distil whiskey, not brew it. Though there is beer that they brew in whiskey barrels and vice’versa. An yup, Duff’s is some o’ the best. He drops lil chunks of the basalt his island is on inta’ each barrel before he ages ‘em. Ah got to tour it when I was in Scotland last year.”

 

Ron didn’t see any evidence of rocks in the richly brown liquid, but he could certainly smell the pungency of it around the synthetic cork stopper when he sniffed it. “You were in Scotland?”

 

“Yah, tha banshee of Dunbrock.” She offered, but didn’t elaborate.

 

She took the bottle from Ron and poured herself another shot full in the steel cup, sipping it a bit more slowly this time. “Ah… mother’s milk…”

 

Ron again cast an eye at Joss. He was hardly _that_ worldly himself, but she seemed young to be knowledgeable about fine spirits; even he was only now able to tell the difference between Japanese and German beers.

 

His eyes drifted from her shot cup, along her arm, to her…

 

He caught himself before they lingered too long there. Touching Joss was what had got KP so hot at him in the first place. The last thing he needed was to _actually_ be guilty of anything.

 

In fact, he should probably be going. His father had raised him better than to be alone in a lady’s room after hours unless it was for business.

 

“You all are thinkin’ you should get out of here,” she chuckled over her half-finished shot. “Dun worry, I told ya you could bunk here.”

 

“How did you…?” he scratched the top of his head again.

 

“Ronnie,” She giggled and shook her head, “Ya’ll may be some kinda ninja god, but yer about as easy ta read as a dime novel. Kim’s married now, why you so worried bout what she thinks bout what yer doin’?  Not like anything’s _really_ gonna happen.”

 

“Because she’s my best friend and I don’t want her angry at me.” He answered. “Not that I understand why she’s angry at me, but…”

 

“’xactly.” Joss tossed back the last of the shot. “If’n you dunno why she’s mad, what can ya do about it? What can I do ‘bout it? Nothin. Now, if you dun mind, I’m gonna go and peel this makeup off my face since I ain’t goin’ anywhere else tonight. I’ll make you up a bed roll in a bit, kay?”

 

Ron watched her saunter into the bathroom and close the door. He supposed she was right. If KP was mad, she was mad. She’d probably cool off by morning anyways. She might not apologize, but he wasn’t going to let it get to him. That was just Kim, a proud creature. And they’d known each other for, well… twenty-three years now. He could roll with it as easily as anyone could by this point, including her wife.

 

Resolving that he would let it roll off his back like so many other things, he sat back to wait for Joss to come out of the bathroom, realizing that two large beers were making their way through his system now and he needed the facilities too.

 

When she came out a moment later, he politely but urgently squeezed past her into the toilet, closing the door and relieving himself, letting the pressure flow out of him from top to bottom in the process.

 

“Thanks, Joss, I needed that after the up-and-down on the horsebot.”

 

“Ah know, right?” She laughed where she stood, looking into the room’s mirror and tying back her hair, “Hard on the ol’ bladder sometimes, ain’t it?”

 

Ron, however, didn’t respond. Joss had taken her riding jacket off during the interim; and with her arms up behind her head, he was acutely aware that her jacket had been her concession to modesty and that her attire for the evening had a close white tank top, and had not included a bra.

 

Suddenly he _really_ wished Rufus was with him, because he felt danger signals.


	2. Chapter 2

Kim stormed back to the table her friends had been occupying, mainly because she was vaguely aware that she was making a scene of herself standing at the bar and flapping her arms like a bird about to take flight. Monique, ever the BFFF, ordered Kim’s favourite drink and brought it over. The redhead, normally one to savour the rare drink with friends and loved ones; instead downed half of the tall irish red in one quick go and sighed bitterly, letting it bomb its way heavily into her stomach.

Felix and Monique continued to watch the heroine, judging whether or not it was safe to say anything yet. She gave them a look like a wet cat, clunking her mug against the table for a moment.

“Fine… let me have it.”

“WTF, GF?” Monique eyed her; fingers wrapped around her own first beer still half-sipped.

“Yeah Red,” Felix chimed in, glad to not have been the first to open his mouth on the situ, “You walk in and ten seconds later slap Ron?”

“He was feeling up my cousin.” She grumbled, taking a more modest draw of her drink.

“More like poking at, carefully,” the paralyzed doctor suggested. “And so what if he was?”

“Um, hello? She’s my _cousin?_ ” She eyed Felix archly.

“And…?”

Kim’s green eyes attempted to convey how obvious the problem should be.

“Baby girl,” Monique arched a brow, giving her a curious look, “She looked a lot like a big girl to me. Unless she’s like, the two-week-old product of a mad science experiment gone awry we haven’t been told about?”

“Mo… She’s just out of school…” the ginger scowled into her drink, “She is hardly old enough to be in here. And Ron Should Know Better.”

The black girl and the wheeled guy shot each other confused and consternated looks.

After another moment, Monique tried a slightly different tac, “So, what was it that kept you from being here to stop him going over there in the first place, then? Warn him off, as it were…”

“There was a fire a few blocks from here, just getting started while I was driving by. I had to make sure everybody was out of the building,” Kim seemed to be making a habit of speaking into her beer, keeping it to her lips as she sipped between statements.

“The soot on your forehead says that it was a lot more than just started, Kim,” Felix offered, handing her a napkin.

“Uuuuugh, that too? I already smell like a dirty barbecue.” She complained while scrubbing her face, knowing where she usually ended up wiping her forehead when she was sweaty.

“You could have just called us and told us you would be late; and stopped to clean up, girl.” Monique took over the task of cleaning off the soot, more effectively getting rid of it as she could actually see it. “We’re not your wife, we won’t run off to commit a crime if we get bored cause you’re not around.”

“Will you back off her, Mo?” the redhead growled, “Seriously, I don’t know what it is between you two…

“Mutual boob envy,” Felix answered with a smirk.

Both girls fixed him with dismissive and disgusted looks.

“What?!” He held up his hands, “It’s true, you’re both heroically proportioned women who like tight tops.”

Rolling her chocolatey eyes, Monique finished her drink after finishing with Kim, “Yeah, sure Wheels, because that’s all women care about.”

“Don’t ask me what _all_ women care about,” he defended, “I’m married to a Latina nerd who looks good in a potato sack, and would run around in one if society let her get away with it and they didn’t chafe. Seriously, meddle not in the wardrobe of the wife.”

“Can we leave my marriage out of this?” Kim grumbled into her mostly drained red beer, still having not set it down fully. “I get it, none of you like or trust her. Yes, she can be very mercurial. But she is mine and I am hers, got it?”

“Ron likes her,” Felix helpfully pointed out as he rolled backwards enough to adjust his chair.

“Ron likes everyone except for Josh Mankey and Monty Fisk, Felix,” the heroine rolled her eyes. “Heck, he even started liking Drakken once the Doctor started remembering his name.”

“It doesn’t hurt that Kim’s wife wears a skin tight cat suit.” Monique rolled her eyes, before collecting Kim’s mug and her own for refills. “And that Ron is a straight man…. Or maybe a closeted lesbian cross dresser? I mean, we all remember the Ballerina costume…”

“And the kimitation costume… and the issue with Britina’s wig at that concert, and that thing with Señor Senior Junior and Wade’s bun warmer, and…” Felix trailed off, having finally gotten a smile out of the redhead, weary though it was. “There she is… Kim Possible has returned.”

“Alrighty Boo,” Monique returned with the two refilled brews, one red and one amber, “Now that you’re done chewing on the plastic foliage, wanna tell us why you are so cranked?”

“I think I’m just tired, Mo…”

“Tired?” She instantly disbelieved what the heroine said, “Girl, I once saw you go seventy six hours on sixty four ounces of Popsi and a box of Tac-Tics. So, pull the other one.”

“I’m not a teenager any more, Mo,” the redhead complained.

The other two looked at her in disbelief.

“Um, none of us are, Kim,” Felix pointed out carefully, “But we’re hardly one foot in the grave either. Or is there something you’re not telling us?”

“I’m tired, that’s all it is, okay?” the heat rose in Kim’s voice, “And Ron just really tweaked me, hitting on my little cousin like some common hornball. And now who knows what they’re up to…”

Monique and Felix began to pick up on a pattern in the words Kim was choosing. But given her inflammable state, they kept it to themselves.

“So, how ‘bout them Mad Dogs eh?” the male of the group attempted to change the subject completely away from love and lust.

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

Ron realized he was uncomfortably close to staring at Joss’s chest as he stood there. Fortunately she seemed to be focused on the mirror and hadn’t noticed. He made a conscious effort to redirect his eyes, and found her right arm, wherein lay an intricate bit of ink scrollwork. 

“U-h ah, ahha ha-,” he stuttered, getting ahold of himself, chuckling nervously, “So that’s Old Crow?”

Joss paused in putting up her hair and looked at her arm, as though to ensure there wasn’t more than one tattoo he might be referring to. “Ayup. Old Crow.”

“You said trickster gods could be pesky?” He rubbed his chin, focusing on the artwork to the exclusion of anything else.

“Yup,” Joss grinned and turned to face him, apparently done with her hair. She kept her arm in his view though, talking about the body art, “He’s actually Raven… But he told me that he doesn’t like that name raght now. Says it sounds like whiney lil human hipsters, that Old Crow sounds more seasoned.”

“Wait,” Ron went from scratching his chin to the top of his head, “You say that like you got the tattoo from…”

“A god?” She grinned, “Well, he’s more of a demigod than an actual fire and brimstone full-on God, but yup.”

Ron made his way closer, sitting down at the small chair in front of the in-built desk. “Okayyy. So… how does that work?”

She sat down with a bounce on the foot of the bed and again looked at her ink, as if more remembering than recounting, “Well, I was in the nor’west and ran into a bunch of looters who had managed to find an old Haida tribal site. Ah’m sure you know that drunks and henchmen always blab. I followed ‘em there and busted them up good fer their troubles before turning ‘em over to tha BLM.”

Rubbing the intricate scrollwork of the very tribal designed raven’s head, she looked at the ceiling idly, “I hung ‘round to triple check things, an after everyone left, Old Crow made himself known to me, so ta speak. He said I had done him a favor, and that therefore he owed me a boon. Then he vanished. I woke up back in mah hotel room, thinkin’ it might have all been a dream, till I realized Ah’d picked up a souvenir of my adventure. It grants me protection from illusion magic and the ability to figer’ out if someone is wearin’ a disguise.”

“Okay,” He nodded, making sure to keep his eyes focused on her shoulder, arm, and ink, rather than anything else in the vicinity, “That’s way cool. Lots better than how I got my monkey powers. I had to willingly get zapped by four magical statues of something I hated in order to fight a mad British lord with surgically altered hands and feet.”

She giggled and nodded, “Ah know tha story. How ya’ll bravely faced yer fear of monkeys in order ta take down Monkey Fist ‘cause Kim weren’t around ta help.”

“Right… cause you used to know all of Kim and my adventures,” he rubbed the back of his neck embarrassedly.

“Ah still know most of em,” She nodded, “Though Ah dun have time to keep up on every single one like Ah used to.”

“Yeah, seems like with magical tattoos, brands, and jewelry, you’ve been pretty busy,” Ron chuckled, moving his eyes around her, careful not to let them linger too long on any one spot.

“Well, Ah never intended to,” She shrugged, leaning back on her arms on the bed and finally ignoring her tattoo, “But it just kina started workin’ out that way. Seems lahk where people call Cousin Kim bout mad science and people tryin’ ta take over the world, people call me to deal with spirits an’ ghosts and things that go bump in tha night. Heck, sometimes tha spirits an Gods themselves even call me. Not on tha phone usually tho.”

Ron laughed at that openly, “Yeah, usually when I get a spiritual message, it’s written on the wall in ketchup or mystery meat gravy… Sometimes with weird nightmares. It would be kinda nice if the Great Monkey would just send a text that says ‘go rescue my niece’.”

Joss giggled at that and shook her longish auburn hair, “Yeah, it’s never _quite_ that simple for me neither. But Ah hear ya.”

When Joss leaned back, Ron had to find somewhere else to look. That tank-top was rather distracting, trapped as it was between her chin and her navel ring and filled with the obvious.

“Ya know, Ron,” She laughed after realizing there was a bit of silence hanging in the room. She grabbed a pillow off the bed and threw it at him, “It’s okay to admit Ah have boobs. I did long time ago.”

Hit in the face by pillow, Ron sputtered and blushed red beneath the fabric. From behind the pillow, which he held over his face to stop him staring at her rather perfectly formed ones, he mumbled, “Ah ha hehe… yeah. I mean… of course you do!”

Leaning forward, Joss smirked and yanked the pillow out of his hands and away from his face. “An’ it is okay to look at em once in a while, Ron. They’re just boobs an’ they ain’t gonna bite ya or anything. Ah mean, they’re not as nice as Monique’s or anything, but Ah’m rather proud of em.”

Ron got very redfaced and flustered, because in leaning forward to snatch the pillow, she had presented him with a perfectly calculated view of her cleavage.

“uh……”

She smacked him with the pillow. “Okay, Ah didn’t say stare at em.”

Laughing it off, she sat back, rolling her multi-hued eyes. “There, sexual tension broken?”

“I guess…” He nodded, still a bit blushed, “But I always thought Monique was kinda… I dunno, big?”

“She’s what ya’d call…” Joss tilted her chin up in consideration, “Voluptuous. But Ah guess since ya’ll grew up with Kim, ya might tend towards the smaller girls, raght?”

Ron blushed again, but nodded his agreement to the assessment. He did indeed prefer a body type that leaned towards the athletic end of the spectrum, and probably could blame Kim and most of her fellow cheerleaders for that predilection. Well except for Bonnie Rockwaller… but that was because of the uncharitable rumors about how she’d got a C cup entering freshman year. Now that Ron was quite a bit more worldly, he knew that those were just that; rumors.

Not that Bonnie hadn’t given him one or two chances to check for himself when he’d been a Naco Millionaire. Now that he had had a few experiences for comparison, he was doubly convinced they were real, and they were spectacular.

“Yeah, Monique has a badical body. Not that I want her hearing me saying that.” He confessed, grinning a little. “Might make things a lil awkweird between us.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” She grinned and held up a pixie scout salute.

“So… Monique. She designed Kim’s 3G style, raght?” Joss again sat forward, this time reaching around Ron for a magazine in her duffle; one which was a couple years old and dog-eared and had Kim was on the cover. “Do ya think she might consider doin’ something for me?”

“Your look seems fine to me,” Ron supplied almost too eagerly.

She bapped him with the magazine playfully. “That’s fer clubbin’ and bar hoppin’. Not fer savin’ the day, goober.”

Ron grinned gamely. At this point in life he knew a thing or two about proper mission attire; he knew that Joss’s clothes were probably more for titillation than rugged outdoors-wear, at least. “I dunno… one of my favourite games gives points for ‘visual-psychological tactics,’ How was I to know that’s not what you were going for?”

“Cause, with vera few exceptions,” Joss rolled her moonstone eyes, “Life’s not a vidia game. Asides, I dun exactly have a ‘ _Live or Dead: Sand Volleyball’_ body.”

Now Ron rolled his eyes. “Don’t sell yourself short, I’d absolutely play a videogame with a girl who looked like you.”

Joss blushed a bit, but rapped him with the magazine a second time. “Flirt. Now seriously, Monique?”

Ron stroked his chin a bit, thinking, “I dunno. She kinda considered KP’s new clothes a personal design challenge. Especially since Kim’s second generation stuff was actually done by the Fashionistas on the sly. Plus, it was on the friends-and-family plan. But I could ask if you want.”

“Unless she werks fer favors, Ah prolly can’t afford it,” Joss rested a defeated face in a palm, sighing. “Ghosts an skinwalkers usually don’t have money, and Gods don’t carry Misa cards.”

“Hey,” He reached out and poked her shoulder near the tattoo, “If there’s one thing I learned from dating Kim in high school, it never hurts to ask. Like, if I had asked earlier to consider me, she might never have been messed with by Eric the synthodrone.”

Joss gave an awkward smiled, but nodded.

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

_Beep beep ba beep doooooo_

The high pitched fifth note told her who was calling on the elongated screen of the watch, “Go for Kim.”

“Morning KP.” Neon green hair greeted her from the screen of her fifth generation kimmunicator, held by the band in her fingers.

“Morning Jaime.” She greeted them with a smile, trying not to let on that she had a hangover worthy of a fight with Shego. “What’s the sitch?”

The slender face on the screen smiled back, “Nothing critical. Just passing on Middleton Fire and Rescue’s personal thanks. Your getting everyone out of the building really simplified their work last night, and they wanted me to personally relay the message.”

“Couldn’t have done it without Wade’s night-vision sunglasses, or your blueprint scans,” she scrubbed the top of her head, trying in vain to smooth out her bed head.

She also couldn’t have done it if she’d passed the building even two minutes later. The fire had been fast spreading and she didn’t have any of her usual gear with her like Jaime’s fire suppression pills or Wade’s disposable gas masks.

This was why she liked working with Jaime, they had a more personable touch than Wade did. Wade would never have taken the time to pass along praise, he was too functionary and too agoraphobic. Plus he just didn’t understand communication with the non-super-geniuses of the world, IE 99.9%. But between the two of them, they balanced out the workload for she and Ron very nicely. Plus it gave Wade time to actually eat and sleep normally, having Jaimie to pick up some of the slack.

“Anything else you want to talk about, KP?” Jamie gave her a meaningful look from the four inch screen of the kimmunicator.

They always had a way of getting gossip the same way Wade did getting intel.

“You heard huh?”

They nodded on screen, flicking their green hair pointedly, “Yup. Do I need to say it?”

She sighed, palming her face with her free hand, “No… I was a total witch to Ron.”

“I was going to start with a B, but yeah… let’s go with that,” they rolled their eyes and smirked. “Want me to call him up so you can appol- Oh wait, no, he’s got his ron-com turned off. Huh.”

“Oh, he does, does he?” her  false-smile disappeared into a narrow eyed frown of suspicion. “Well, No then. I guess he can wait for me to say sorry later.”

Jaime sighed on the screen, tempted to taser her remotely for being stubborn. They settled on giving her the eye, “Fiiiiine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Jaime out.”

Grumbling, the redhead put her kimmunicator back on the nightstand with more force than was strictly necessary. Muttering, she drug herself out of bed and headed for the bathroom, hoping she got there before the tweebs or Aunt June.

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

_♫Raven hair and ruby lips_

_Sparks fly from her finger tips_

_Echoed voices in the night_

_She's a restless spirit on an endless flight_

_Woohooo Witchy Woman, see how high she flies_

_Woohoo Witchy Woman, she got the moon in her eye_ _♪_

Ron reached around, trying to slap the alarm radio on his phone. His somnolent brain half-wondered why 100.00 Internet Pop was playing a song from like decades before he was born.

The music stopped even though he had yet to find his phone with his hand, eyes still stubbornly shut.

“This is Joss.”

Ah, so it wasn’t his phone, it was hers.

As his brain reluctantly started rousing, he remembered he was in a sleeping bag, on a foam mat, on the floor of Joss’s motel room. He didn’t even know where his phone was.

Oh yeah, it was on the desk thingy. He had projected Zombie Bricks: Fury Saga Seven for them to watch on the ceiling. The sound kinda sucked, but it was still fun. Although it was a tight fit to squeeze both of them onto the twin bed of the single motel to watch. And he kept getting a face full of her perfume, not that that was unwelcome. Just unusually pungent.

“Mmmhm? Haunted you say? Well Ah’m in the area actually, so I can look today. I doubt it really is, old mines are full o’ funny sounds, but yeah.”

Ron kept respectfully silent from the floor, listening to the half of the conversation he was privy to. Also, because he was still too sleepy to move or think anyway.

“Yeah. Lemme get mah stuff together, grab a shower, an’ Ah’ll head out.”

He heard a beep as she set the phone down on her night stand. “’Ey Ron, ya’ll wake down there?”

The blond made an affirmative noise and rolled around a bit to indicate he was; even if ninety percent of his body disagreed.

“I gotta go out on a mission. An’ ah think you all needa get ready for yer reunion, raght?”

He heard rustling on the bed, and a moment later, Joss appeared in the vision of one cracked eye. She had on Fearless Ferret sleep pants and a looser top than she had worn the night before, freeing him from the worry of staring at her figure before his brain was ready for it.

“Imma grab a quick shower, ya’ll wanna wait around to use it after, or git on the road?” She stretched, and Ron could hear her joints popping audibly, mostly since her ankles were basically in his face.

Giving it as much thought as his sleepy brain could muster, he finally decided a course of action. “I’ll wait for the shower, then you can drop me at my hotel on your way out?”

“Sounds lahk a plan.” Joss’s ankles receded from his vision behind the bed and he heard the door to the small bathroom close a moment later. Once he heard the shower running through the thin wall, Ron peeled back the sleeping bag and got out. Then he fished out his jeans from the foot of the bag and pulled them up over his boxers. Not that he didn’t mind Joss maybe seeing him in his underwear, but they weren’t like that where he was just going to walk around in front of her. He pulled the jeans on for the moment and then set about tying up the sleeping bag and mat.

Of course, it took him three or four tries. He might be king of all lanyards, but sleeping bags were a different story entirely. He’d never quite got the hang of them. The mat was much easier. He was used to those from years in Japan. He stuck them next to Joss’s bag, hoping he’d done them up in whatever was most convenient for her to pack.

Turning around, he found Joss behind him in the same pajamas she had gone into the bathroom with. Only because her auburn hair was now almost brunette with wetness and her skin a bit pink from the hot water was he sure she had actually showered. Well that and he had heard the water running. KP was rather notorious for not showering if she was in a rush, so he was accustomed to that behavior.

“Yer turn,” She announced, flopping down on the bed and digging in that ever-present duffle for a hair brush. “Soap an’ stuff is still there. Ah use mah own.”

Nodding, Ron retreated to the bathroom. He could definitely smell the stuff Joss used. Like her perfume of the night before, it was heady and oak’ish, though she seemed to have taken whatever bottles of the stuff with her. Shucking off his clothes, he got in the shower and went about his morning routine as best he could. He hollered in surprise because he was only about five minutes into the process when the hot water became ice-cold water. It didn’t help that he had backed away from the shower nozzle to wash his hair, and so the ice water was hitting him in a very sensitive place.

Grumbling, he finished his shower more quickly than intended, and tugged on his clothes again after drying with a reedy motel towel, making sure to smooth the day-old garments into place as best as he could. “Stupid cheap motel room water heater… ugh!”

Joss chuckled at him as he came out of the bathroom, shaking her head, “Yeah, I suppose I wasn’t really ‘specting anyone to have to use it after me. Sorry fer not rememberin’.”

Ron nodded in understanding, using the cheap plastic hair brush from the bathroom to brush out his short hair. Then he stopped dead when he turned to the mirror and caught a sight.

Joss was wearing what apparently counted as her ‘mission gear.’ It consisted of zip-off khaki cargo shorts; held in place by a thick black leather belt, from which hung a few holders and pouches. Up top she was wearing a similar zip-off green safari shirt, sleeves zipped away showing off the bottom half of her arm ink. What was getting to him though, was the rest. She had a backpack already slung on, which clipped across her mid-section in front. Between the strap tugging her round the middle and the open buttons on the top of her faded green shirt, her breasts were once again rather prominent, despite the fact that he was sure this time she was wearing a bra.

When she pulled on her sunglasses, the impression was complete. Joss Possible looked like a redheaded version of Cara Loft: Temple Raider. It was every teenage boy’s favourite character for a reason, one which Ron was acutely aware of between her booted legs and the way the backpack and belt pulled everything taught around her body.

Joss busied herself with putting her various tools into the pouches and pockets on her belt, shorts, and shirt.

Ron reminded himself yet again not to stare at the athletic college girl.

After a moment, he got a better hold of himself, focusing on the clothes instead of the girl they wrapped around. “Why do you want to change your gear look? Seems spankin’ to me.”

Joss turned to him a moment in the mirror. He couldn’t actually see them behind the glasses, but he was sure she rolled her eyes at him.

“’Cause one; Ah can’t get these shorts no more, and the shirts dun come in this green no more neither. And two, you dun think it looks a bit too much like Cara Loft? I want my own look, not one Ah stole from a vidia game.”

He nodded, giving her an obvious critical eye for her benefit this time. “Well, it does, but I doubt anyone is complaining about _that._ ”

Joss again threw the thin motel pillow at him and laughed. “Typical horny guy thoughts. Least horny girls dun’ get worked up over pixel boobs and butts.”

Ron turned to face her directly and peeked over the pillow at her curiously, “Oh?”

She realized she had just confessed her alignment and laughed a bit more nervously, “Well… yeah?”

Ron shrugged it off. After all, his only serious ex-girlfriend was a lesbian. He did want to talk to her about that, because she had proved fun to be around; but they both had places to be and he bet Joss knew her cousin was gay by now, wedding and all that...

After a moment’s thought however, he grabbed his ron-com out of his pocket, turned it on, and snapped a picture of her. When she shot him an obvious look from under her glasses, he grinned openly. “For Monique… cause if you want me to ask her, she needs to know what kind of challenge she’s looking at, right?”

“Oh yeah… right.” Joss nodded dumbly; having mostly forgotten she had asked that the night before. Laughing, she strutted past him to the door to the motel room, “Alrighty, let’s go. An’ Ah promise not to use Fireball’s horse mode, since neither of us wants ’nother wedgie.”

Ron nodded in agreement with that. Hugging a pretty girl on a horse was not horrible, but if she was wearing a backpack; he knew from experience it wouldn’t be nearly as fun, just ouchy.

They made their way out and Joss locked up after them. Unlike the trip from the bar to the motel, the ride to Ron’s hotel was a bit long, owing to having been in the complete opposite direction from the meeting place the night before. After dropping him off, she rode off into the morning sunshine and Ron turned to go into his own rented room. He was feeling good, until he found Kim waiting in the lobby.

“Oh Naco crumbs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: So I wasn’t sure about the bits of this chapter centering round Ron and Joss. Because yeah, he’s not acting like a relatively mature twenty-eight-year-old guy here, but more like a horny teen who knows he’s a horny teen. But after some consideration, I decided to leave it in place anyway. This probably means a bit of tweaking to the next chapter or so, but I think it works well enough.


	3. Chapter 3

Ron hoped _hoped_ HOPED that Kim was just there to pick him up for a mission. She certainly had her game face on.

“So… have a good night, Ron?” She glared at him.

“Ah- ha- haha… KP!” He nervously shuffled his feet. “So how are youuu?”

“Apparently not as happy as you, Ron.” She snipped off as she narrowed her eyes.

“Y- you don’t say?”

“You’re still wearing your clothes from last night, and you walked in here from the outside door.” She growled hotly, looking him up and down in his button-up shirt and jeans, “So yeah, I do say.”

“Ah… these old things?” He chuckled nervously, suddenly wishing he had the ninja power of invisibility. Or smoke bombs. Or literally anything to get him out from in front of her. “Um… You wouldn’t belie-,”

“No Ron,” She stared at him flatly, “I would not believe that those are the only clothes you brought for the weekend. Nor would I believe that you got locked out of your room last night. And I wouldn’t believe for a moment that you were just too lazy to change clothes this morning. Know what I _would_ believe?”

This was a trap. He knew it was. He didn’t need a magical tattoo or chaotic monkey powers to see it. But it was probably a trap-trap, a front-facing trap that was obvious, with a hidden trap behind it… and he also saw no way out of it.

“That you messed around with my cousin!”

It wasn’t a shout, but it sure hit him with the full force of one. And worse, it wasn’t true. But he doubted that the redhead, in her current state, would believe him.

“So, is it true?” She hissed darkly, radiating anger, “Did you screw my little cousin?”

Ron’s jaw would have hit the floor if it wasn’t attached. For Kim to use language like her wife, she was beyond angry with him.

The blonde man went through a wave of emotions. Shame, sadness, fear, confusion…

He centered himself as best he could, because the heroine was putting off seriously toxic waves, and Ron was not Master Sensei when it came to facing emotional adversity. Breathing deeply, he looked up at her blazing green eyes.

“KP, I didn’t. I haven’t. Why are you so tweaked about this?”

“Tweaked? _Tweaked_?” She sneered again, and the rush of heat coming off her doubled, “I am so beyond tweaked, Ron Stoppable. Joss used to worship you. I cannot BELIEVE you would take advantage of that to… to… to bag her.”

Again Ron breathed deeply, trying to find his cheesy center. He reminded himself that Kim was his bestest best friend. That she loved him like a brother. That this was all just some misunderstanding brought on by jet lag, or the stress of setting up for the reunion, or not enough Nacos; something totally fixable.

Kim, however, misinterpreted his silence for admission. Usually when Ron was trying to deny something, he chattered and stuttered and misdirected, like earlier. Quiet meant he was giving in.

“So you did.” She whispered darkly. “Well I hope you are freaking happy with yourself.”

She stormed passed him in her quiet, fearsome way. He could tell she was moving to get out of the building before she started crying, and let her go.

Reaching into his pocket, he felt for his phone.

“Oh crud… It’s still in Joss’s motel. Ughhhhh!” He cursed himself now for something that _was_ his fault.

Fumbling around again, standing in the lobby for his more-upscale hotel, he fished out his ron-com. Thumbing the button, he waited. After a moment, Jaime’s face appeared on screen. Good, this would be less awkweird.

Wade and Monique still had tension after all these years.

“Jaime! Kim just stormed out of here like me getting kicked out of the all-you-can-cram Enchirito bar. I don’t have my phone on me, long story. I need you to patch me through to Monique, quick like a bunny!”

Jaime nodded, their nose-hoop glinting in whatever light they were sitting in, “Gotcha. I’ll get the mocha goddess on the case. I could put you directly through, but don’t you need to get changed and get to the civic center though? You’re still catering the thing, right?”

“Crud…” Ron groaned aloud. It had almost slipped his mind in the face of Kim’s misguided rage. He couldn’t both talk to Mo and prepare lunch for almost three hundred people. “I’ll grab Rufus and clothes and head over there. I swear, I’ll never get girls if I live to be a hundred and fifty.”

“Hey, don’t ask me, I still don’t get them.” They smirked from the screen, “Signing off. I’ll tell Wade to send any crises elsewhere. I doubt Kim is in any state to go after Henches.”

“Not if she thinks they’re doing the horizontal mambo with her relatives she’s not,” Ron bemoaned, walking towards the elevator. “While you’re at it, can you or Wade try to find Joss’s number for me?”

The green haired nonbinary shot Ron a loaded look through the screen, “Okay… you were at a cute girl’s motel room, and you DIDN’T get digits? Maybe KP is right to be angry…”

“Don’t you start with me too brosis.” The blond groaned as he keyed his door. One of these days he really needed to sync his phone to his com. “It’s on my phone. But my phone is there… and who remembers phone numbers anymore?”

“Wade does.” They grinned, “But then again, Wade remembers Pi to the three hundredth decimal without concentrating. Alright, I’ll get the info for you. You just get to work. Out.”

Ron tossed his com on the bed and raced to his garment bag hanging on the rack, “Cargos? No. I <3 BN tee? No. Shinobi Shozoku? No. KP branded shirt? She’d kill me twice… Ah!”

He pulled out the toque noir, gold and purple cook’s coat, Mad Dog’s apron, and pants and tossed them to the bed.

A quick change into the special garb for the event and he turned, grabbed the ball which held a sleeping Rufus, and raced back out the door.

 

**_-BH-_ **

 

Joss dismounted Fireball and laid her hand on its head, putting it back into motorcycle mode and setting it up on the kickstand. The final three miles had required travel by horse because the fire road into the mine was just not suited for a city motorcycle with smooth tires and a street suspension.

She was entering what had been an old gold mine; which its new owners intended to turn into a rare-earth metals mine. Except for the problem of apparent ghosts who were deep inside, scaring off the sampling team.

The auburn-haired young woman came to the mouth of the mine and looked around. Nothing about it really screamed ‘haunted’ or ‘possessed’ to her.  The brush at the mouth of the mine beyond the rusty chain link fence had been trampled down, and a few scrawny trees cut away to ease access for the property surveyors and maybe the state licenser. The place stood abandoned, aside from the few fresh footprints and tire tracks. Nothing about those appeared unusual either, men and women’s foot prints going in and out of the entryway. Standard full-ton pickup tracks going to, and then circling away through the rough brush around the area. A few drag marks where light equipment had been carried in.

Stepping into the mouth of the mine, she tugged out her smartphone and keyed on the flashlight. A few paces in, she found the survey equipment. It was stacked in a neat pile, consisting of heavy drills, monopods, and some sample-cases. Again there were footprints in the dirt around the area. A few led deeper into the mine, and then came back out at a faster pace.

But something seemed… off. The dirt and sand in the cave didn’t have any animal tracks in it. Usually something wild would be using the mouth of a cave or mine to shelter in, or to drag its kills into. Getting down low to the ground, she noticed it. A faint sort of grain running back and forth across the foot of the mine. The sand and debris had been brushed smooth aside from the fresh boot-prints.

The survey team wouldn’t take time to do that.

She did notice that the tattoo on her arm wasn’t itching. So no magic was present here. Of course, ghosts weren’t magic, so that didn’t mean a lot; but then again, ghosts didn’t tend to leave footprints or use brooms either.

Going deeper down into the old mine, she moved away from the accumulated sand and soil in the mouth. There was still grit down here along the old cart tracks, but not generally enough to tell who or how many had passed this way, just that it had been disturbed.

Of course, even the double LED lights on her phone were not bright enough to give a huge amount of detail; so for all she knew, there could be things she was missing.

“Okay,” She spoke with no one but herself as she proceeded, “The surveyors said they got about two thousand feet inside when they heard a grinding noise and a hum and banging. And of course, a glow of light which turned from white to green as they approached.”

She was about one hundred feet in, and saw nor heard anything of the sort. She walked deeper into the mine’s main corridor, stepping between the rails for easiest movement. The timbers will all still in decent shape despite the rusty disuse of the old cart path.

She noticed a deep nick in one. Shining her light on the timber, she traced it with the tip of a finger and examined it. The gouge was fresh, exposing cleaner wood beneath the grey old pillars. If the team had left most of their gear back at the entrance to the cave, then what had made this?

Momentarily ticking off the light of her phone, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the near blackness several hundred feet into the mine. She reached out with her other senses, allowing the old gold-hole to swallow her up and tell her its secrets.

At first all she could sense was the typical things of a mine shaft. The air was a mixture of dusty stone, fungus and mildew, and was several degrees cooler than the air of the high desert plateau outside. There was nothing to hear beyond her own breathing and heartbeat; not even the cliché dripping of water.

After a few moments, however, she began to pick up on something. On her bare legs and arms, she could feel the faintest flow of air coming from within the cave-like interior of the mine. That was wrong. At this time of day, air should be sinking into the mine from outside as it cooled, not rising up out of it.

Then there was something else, something in that air. Coppery perhaps. A scent was there, as her brain became blind to the usual musty smells of the cavern, she began to pick up the more subtle notes. And… yes… urine. She still didn’t hear anything beyond herself, though. Not a sound.

“Well, ghosts don’t take a piss…” She rolled her eyes, “And I still ain’t seeing animal tracks down here. Not even bats on tha ceiling. So this is less specters and spooks, and more Scooby Doo. Somebody didn’ want anyone knowing they were in here. An’ chased off the people who came down.”

Switching back on the light on her phone, Joss made her way further into the mine. She saw footprints in the dust still when she shined the LEDs down on the old rails; normal-walking into the cavern, and running when going out. There was a spot where someone had stumbled on the stone, a set of knee and hand prints. But other than that, still no evidence of anyone in the cavern other than the survey team.

When she passed the two thousand foot mark, Joss again turned off the light of her phone and reached out with all her senses. It was something she had learned over the past few years; that the human body was well equipped to find out about its environment, as long as you were willing to listen to it. Most people just didn’t.

After a few moments, she saw… something. She wasn’t sure if it was actually there, or her brain was just making sparks in her eyes to compensate for the blackness of the mine, but she was convinced that it was at least worth considering. There might be a tiny red light further down the cavern.

Wade had once told her that occasionally the human eye, in blackness, would send spark signals to the brain as random cells in the retina were hit by random photons and neutrinos, giving the impression of light where there was none. But Joss was on a hunch that there really was a tiny red glow down further.

And she could still smell the faintest scent of urine under the must of the mine shaft air.

Again clicking her light on, she made her way down the shaft. She still heard no grinding, groaning, rumbling, or the like. And no glowing white or green lights.

At four thousand or so feet, she shut off her light for a third time. Again after a few moments she became adjusted to the darkness of the gold mine’s interior. Again she could just detect the red glow at the edge of her vision further down the shaft. But now she… she sensed… something.

It wasn’t sound… but it was like… a pressure on her ears. And a tingle on her skin.

There was a presence down here alright.

Reaching into a shirt pocket, she pulled out one of her tools. This wasn’t a wrench or a swiss army knife; it was her old medicine bag. She had made it when she went to a summer camp as a kid, but that didn’t mean it was any less real. Most spiritual magic came from within, not from without, and by putting possessions of her own in the bag, it tied it to her own power.

She focused on it, and muttered a few mantras. It didn’t really feel like a ghost or displaced spirit.

Slipping it back into her pocket, she tried another item. It was an old wolf’s tooth with scrimshaw carved around it. Again, she felt no reaction; so it wasn’t an animal hiding down there, alive or dead.

She took a few steps in the blackness. The red tick in her vision moved with her position. So she wasn’t imagining it and it wasn’t an effect of the dark on her eyes.

Fishing around in a pocket of her pants, she pulled out a shape, cool and hard. Fumbling, she clicked it to her phone’s bottom and turned the screen back on. This was a commercial FLIR camera. It was not as slick as Cousin Kim’s night vision sunglasses, but it was better than nothing at all.

Looking through the infrared thermal scan of the camera, she didn’t see much. Just the walls, a half-degree or so different from the air. The metal tracks were similarly around the ambient temperature and barely showed up.

Then she saw it. A very vague plume of slightly lighter blue in the distance. Right at the edge of the thermal camera’s range and next to a side tunnel.

Well Joss knew what that was.

Turning off the phone again, she waited for her vision to adjust to the blackness. Slowly walking forward, using only her visual memory of the cave ahead, she went another two hundred feet or so.

“Alright. Ya’ll can come out. I know you’re down here.”

Her dark adapted vision was suddenly blinded by an ethereal green glow and she was knocked on her ass as something hit her.

 

**_-BH-_ **

 

_♫I met her in a club down in North Soho_

_Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like coca cola_

_C-O-L-A cola_ _♪_

 

Monique hadn’t heard that ring in a while. And usually when she did, it _wasn’t_ great news. Picking up her retro-chic flippy, she eyed the outside display. Yup, a rainbow colored head under a name.

“What’s up Jaime?” She flipped the phone open and pressed it to her ear, hoping someone wasn’t in the hospital.

Kim’s team only called her if an emergency was the case, because Monique wasn’t really a part of that world. And she generally wouldn’t talk to Wade either unless it was _really_ an emergency. So she braced herself as the other voice came on the line.

“Miss Monique,” they said in their usually cheery manner, “I hate to bother you, but we have a sitch that needs your unique touch.”

Well, that at least didn’t sound like someone was dead or dying. She tried to slow her heartrate down and breathe as she nodded to no one. “Alright Jaime. What in the world could you all need that only I could answer?”

“Well Miss Monique,” They chewed their little lip, “It seems that KP went off the rails on Ron again this morning. Like, in public, with both barrels.”

The black woman sighed deeply, pinching the bridge of her nose, “That girl… do you know what it was about this time?”

“Near as I can tell, it’s about the same thing you all were talking about last night.” They shook their head. “Ron didn’t get me a lot of details because he had to run, but he asked me to ask you specifically.”

“Know where she’s at right now?” Monique was already grabbing her pocket book and slugging the last of her mochachino around the conversation.

“Well, if she keeps to her schedule, she’ll be on her way to pick up her dress at the cleaner,” Jaimie was mumbling as she heard them clicking away on whatever they were working on at the other end of the line, “Yup, kimmunicator shows her on the move around down town. I’d say your best bet is intercept her at Stich’n’time on Fourth Street. Need a map?”

She shook her head as though Jaime could see her, which they couldn’t on the flippy, “No, I know it. I’ll straighten that girl out. Or try at least; you know how she can be.”

There was an affirmative grunt on the other end of the line. “Alrighty Miss Mo. You know where I’m at if you need anything.”

“No, I really don’t,” She chuckled because all Jaime was right now was a voice on a phone call and for all she knew they could be on the moon, “But yeah, I do know how to reach you. Take care sweet cheeks.”

“Jaime Out,”

With the call ended, Monique she took her phone away from her face and began swiping at the large screen. It might be a folding phone specially imported from Korea, but it was also a modern smart phone, because she couldn’t live without Faceplace and a big display. In a moment she had summoned a Lifter car to her location with the destination and an urgent flag. Clipping the phone closed, she slipped it into her handbag and strutted out of the coffee shop to the corner to wait.

 

**_-BH-_ **

 

“…so…?”

“So what?”

Felix rolled his eyes as he rolled around the kitchen space at the convention center. “So… Kim’s Cousin? How did it go?”

“Nothing happened!” Ron yelped in a slight panic.

“Uh…” The man in the chair arched a brow at the reaction. “…okay then?”

Ron sighed heavily, wiping his hands on his apron, “Sorry man, it’s just, after KP this morning, I’m a lil twitchy. No no Marco, the queso blanco goes with the nachos con salsa verde… the mozzarella de buccalo is for the mini pizzas.”

Felix followed Ron’s eyes, but only saw two blocks of white cheese. Looking back to the blond man, he shook his head, “So you ran off with a smoking hot redhead and nothing happened?”

“Well, not nothing,” Ron continued working, dexterously chopping peppers as he spoke, “We had a drink or two, talked, watched a movie…”

“Hey, sounds like a date to me,” the doctor rolled his eyes and rolled after Ron.

Between them, Rufus chittered irritably at staff and ran up and down the table giving directions from inside his pet-a-sphere. It probably seemed strange to outsiders for a rodent to be in the kitchen, let alone one running the operation, but that was Rufus.

Ron slid the peppers into whatever he was working on and then turned to Felix, rubbing the back of his neck, “Hehe, maybe, I dunno. I slept on the floor. It was fun.”

“Sleeping on the floor?” Felix disbelieved as he maneuvered around a running chef.

“No, everything else,” Ron laughed, “But then, this morning, KP ambushed me at the hotel and just… exploded everywhere!”

“Wait, she’s still on that?” the man in the chair blinked, “I thought when we left her last night she had cooled off about the whole thing.”

“No such luck,” the blond sighed and put a skillet onto a burner, “Just… I don’t even know. I know Kim has stuff going on that’s stressing her, but it’s not about me… some ‘project’ she won’t tell me about.”

“So… maybe she’s transferring?” Felix offered as he handed Ron a rather large knife.

“Mmmm, maybe.” He cleaved a rack of ribs in one swing, which Rufus then grabbed and hurried to another station via ball pressure. “or maybe it’s just years of built up stuff… Iunno.”

“So… going to see Miss Moonstone again?” the wheeled doctor probed with a grin.

Ron just groaned. “Okay man, out of my kitchen if you’re not helping.”

Felix held up his hands in supplication and then turned, wheeling his way out of the area. His doctorate was in Orthotic and Prosthetic design, not deconstructive gastronomy.

 

**_-BH-_ **

 

Consciousness returned slowly to Joss. Her brain was aware, but nothing else was. She could wiggle her eyelids, but not enough to open them. Same with the tips of her fingers and toes. That sort of ‘locked-in’ state tried to induce panic in her, but she fought it back as best she could.

Soon enough she became aware of sounds. Definitely a grinding whirring sound.

But not from any ghost; it was from a rotary tool.

After a few minutes the sound was replaced by hammering.

Joss regained some control over her body as she took in the noises around her. Moving her arms and legs verified that she was bound. It felt like plastic zip cuffs. She was in a chair, but didn’t seem to be bound to it.

Rookie mistake.

Then again, she realized it felt like they had rifled all of her pockets and taken her backpack… so maybe not.  

Still, she was far from helpless. She just needed a bit of time.  

The young redhead finally managed to get an eye cracked open against the effects of whatever had hit her. Someone was in front of her standing at a work bench attached to a metal wall, grinding and hammering on something. Visions of red-hot pokers and tongue tongs filled her scattered mind.

They were in a long dark coat and boots, with a thick shock of inky black hair spilling over the collar and down their back. She couldn’t be more certain than that because whoever they were, they were backlit by the lights of the workbench; and of course, her eyes still weren’t completely cooperating with her brain’s commands.

But if there was one thing Joss knew, it was that the best defense was to go on the offensive.

Reaching a bit, she managed to fish the tail of her shirt out of the back of her pants despite her bound hands. She managed to inch it up enough to expose her ink, and then slid her hands back down. Concentrating on her own energy, she chewed her lower lip and felt the heat build on the isatum seal. Soon it was _too_ hot, but she had to bear up under it.

Just as the pain was getting to be enough to make her shiver and try to jerk away from it, the plastic cuffs on her wrist stretched and slid free, melting at least to softness. She was going to have some serious blisters, but for freedom it was a small price to pay.

She shoved her left thumb into the front of her pants and muttered her mantra, and with a thump a thirteen-inch blade materialized in her hand, glowing crimson. Swinging downwards, she cleaved the plastic cuffs on her ankles and leapt to her feet.

Charging forward, Joss gave a war cry and slung her boomerang-shaped blade from her left to right hand, raising it over her head.

Her target spun with surprised and hurled a blast of green energy. The auburn haired woman smacked it away with her magical bent knife, sending it flying into a wall of the mine with a splash of light.

But Joss stopped short in her charge, realization dawning on her. The form in the trench coat wasn’t some psychopathic killer.

Well, okay, maybe she was a bit of a psycho… but it was… “Shego?”

The onetime villainess and the investigator stared at each other. Shego’s hands still dripped with green fire, and Joss still had her curved blade at the ready.

After a moment, seeing that the shorter woman wasn’t going to try to cleave her, Shego extinguished her hands, dusting them off on her coat. “And who are you to know me, pipsqueak?”

Lowering her knife, Joss stood down, albeit a little wearily. “Ya’ll don’t remember me, do ya?”

Reaching behind her, Shego lifted up a wallet, waving it in the air, “I recognize the family name, but you specifically? No.”

The younger woman frowned as her ID was wagged around, again reminded she had been waylaid and stripped of all her stuff. Not an auspicious start to this meeting.

Giving her a sideways look, Shego tossed the open billfold back onto the bench, next to her tools and her project. “Now, tell me why you came busting in on my privacy?”

Rolling her eyes, Joss blew a breath through her bangs, “Cause you all are here illegally, an’ Ah was sent down here to find out who you were and why you were here.”

“Oh, are you with those chumps who were down here yesterday?” the former villain rested one hand on her hip, touching a finger on the other to her chin, “They didn’t get nearly as far; all I had to do was go boogity boogity at them and they ran.”

“Not with; but yup, they called me.” She nodded and lowered her knife hand, seeing no need to stay on guard as Shego had extinguished her fists.

“That’s a pretty nice pig sticker you got there,” Shego gave a meaningful look at the glowing red blade. “Long knife or short sword?”

Joss looked at the blade, which was bent in the middle to form the signature shape, “Kukri, So technically a long knife. But Ah get what you mean.”

With a whoosh, the blade dissolved in her hand and the red glow arched around her and back into her hip through her shorts. “So, wanna tell me why yer down here?”

“Can’t a girl just want to get away from it all?” She looked around them at the decrepit and dimly lit mine.

“Well, this is ‘bout as far away from it as ya’ll can get on this continent Ah s’pose.” Joss also glanced around.

Shego nodded. Then she glanced again at her erstwhile captive’s driver’s license. “Wait, Montana? I _do_ know you… You’re Kimmie’s goofy little kid cousin!”

Joss grumbled at that, but otherwise held her tongue on the point. “So now you all recognize me?”

“It’s not every day that you get showed up by a twelve-year-old, kiddo.” The ex-villainess rolled her unnaturally green eyes. “Stuff like that a person tends to remember. But you grew up quite a bit, it seems.”

Joss blushed a bit at the faint praise. After a moment, she got back on task, “So, why down here? Ah take it Cousin Kim dun know you’re in town?”

Giving a derisive snort, Shego returned to whatever it was she was working on, “Do you think I’d be at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft if I _wanted_ your cousin to know I was in town?”

As she fiddled away, she looked over her shoulder, “Kimmie and I had a pretty nasty fight before she left NYC. She didn’t like a job I took last month. I mean _really_ didn’t like. Not that I was doing anything illegal, or particularly immoral… but you know how she can be.”

“Ah do,” The young redhead made her way around to see what it was that had the older woman’s attentions.

“So, I figured I’d get myself out of the dog house by making her a little anniversary gift. A surprise.”

“An’ you all couldn’t have done that in tha city?” Joss looked askew at the assemblage of parts on the bench.

“With all of her friends in town?” Shego gave a bark of derisive laughter. “The surprised would be spoiled the moment I got off the plane. Besides, this used to be one of Doctor D’s old lairs, so I figured I’d have all that I needed. How was I supposed to know that Global justice cleaned the place out years ago?”

“Wait,” Joss again looked around the side-chamber of the old mine, “Yer sayin’ you brought this all down with you then? How? That metal wall don’t even look like it coulda fit down the tunnel!”

“Oh relax, squirt,” Shego shrugged, “It’s Lortech. All folds up into a shoebox.”

Joss gave an appreciative whistle. The alien technology was only just now coming out of the laboratories, and was impossibly expensive. Shaking her head at the affluence, she went about putting her possessions back into her pockets. Shego apparently had no intention of hurting her or further restraining her, and made no move to stop her.

“So, a anniversary gift huh?”

“Yeah,” the older woman held up what she’d been working on.

It was a medallion, with Kim’s initials stylized into it, made up of a variety of materials.

“The ring,” Shego indicated the black outer shape, “Is the wrist joint of a Lorwardian tank. The black and gold ‘K’ I carved out of the shell of a Lil Diablo bot. The ‘P’ in purple is some scrapped metal her brothers gave me from her old car. The red gem is actually the LED from a nano-tick from that one time Drakken and I nearly blew her face off. The background is an E-ink display from the modulator that I had stuck on the back of my neck that one time. All personal stuff.”

Joss grinned at it all. It was indeed all personal stuff for Kim and Shego’s many adventures. She smiled broadly, “Alraght, Ah suppose I can fergive you fer squattin in this mine. Was prolly just bad luck that ya’ll chose one which was recently sold.”

“Yeah, sure, bad luck, let’s go with that,” She gave a cryptic smirk, “But yeah, I’ll be out of here by tonight. Need to get cleaned up and give it to Kimmie anyways at her reunion where everyone can see it and she can’t turn it down without making a scene in front of all her friends.”

“Peer pressure?” Joss rolled her eyes and smirked, “You all are still evil.”

“Yup,” Shego grinned, “Wanna help me out by sneaking me in and setting up the PA system? Uh… you’ll need to lose the accent before that. Think you can do it?”

“I can speak rather sophisticatedly when I absolutely need to, I will have you know.” Joss had to concentrate on her words, but indeed could minimize her drawl when needed.

“Good,” she grinned, “This works out, I might buy you a new set of boots or something for the trouble.”

****

**_-BH-_ **

 

Kim’s eyes were still slightly puffy from her morning eruption, so she stopped by her parent’s house and grabbed some sundries, including eye-drops. She also included her makeup for the evening, as she wouldn’t have time to come back here once she picked up her dress and ran a few more spot errands… and assuming that the world didn’t try to eat itself this afternoon in between.

A three-bar buzz vibrated her wrist and she looked at her kimmunicator’s screen. It was a text, black text on a white screen, meaning one of her tertiary contacts

[a curvy woman called in a favour of yours early yesterday. private plane flight from JFK to MIX. sorry took me so long to let you know -PopPop]

“Oh great…” the redhead muttered irritably.

She’d flown to Middleton alone specifically to ignore this issue for the weekend. Maybe longer. Well, Pop Pop Porter didn’t know that. All he knew was that he was helping Kim’s Wife get to her.

And right now, Kim didn’t have the mental energy to spare in calling to correct him. She starred the text and swiped it away to deal with later. She still had to get to the cleaners, get her green dress, and then swing by…

“Oh for f-…” She palmed her face, she was supposed to get dressed at Joss’s motel so the two of them could catch up alone for girl time.

So much for that plan now.

“Well, I’ll figure it out on the way to the cleaners.” And out the door she went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: This chapter got a bit of tweaking last minute. Jaimie is the first time I have tried a non-binary character, so please bear with me if it seems a bit jarring in the sections dealing with them. The character is a bit of a spin off of a similar character I toyed with in an aborted third section of my “Who Wants to Live Forever” cookie about the immortal Shego. Meanwhile, Reviews still equal love and Resharing is still caring.


	4. Chapter 4

Ron had a decent chunk of time laid out where he could safely be away from the kitchen. His people were the best in the region, and aside from the occasional cheese mix-up, could be trusted to handle things without him cracking the whip.

That really helped out with his world-saving hobby; having a staff he could trust.

It really _was_ more of a hobby at this point. He’d jump up and go whenever Kim or Wade called… but those calls came less often these days. Wade’s latest generation of gear, including the pocket drones, meant Kim could multitask a lot more easily. And she’d always been the more politically savvy of the two, and now that they could no longer rely on their “teenage exuberance” to excuse faux pas, Ron preferred not to cause awkward scenes.

So Ron tended to go on those missions that didn’t require a lot of glad-handing or personal interactions. Except for Japan, where he was top dog on missions and knew the culture and the social cues; and of course, Camp Wannaweep.

That toxic lake never seemed to get cleansed.

The blond man sought out his wheeled friend amongst the early arrivers as his staff laid out the first round of snacks. He found him puttering around the display case, which was currently filled with Class of ’07 trophies and athletic highlights.

“Man, I remember this game,” he indicated a black and white newspaper still, “you ran almost three hundred yards, most of it sideways!”

Ron rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the clipping, “Yeah, hehe… Man those were the days, huh?”

“Well, don’t look at me,” Felix grinned, “I was never a running back, and I never dated the head cheerleader. Not that I wouldn’t have liked to.”

“Be a running back?” Ron blinked, “I don’t think the field was handi-accessible, buddy.”

“No,” Felix laughed, “The other bit.”

The blond turned to look at his friend, “Really?”

“I, uh…” He ran a hand through his hair as he looked up, “I kinda had a little crush on Kim when I met her.”

“You and about everyone who ever met her,” Ron scoffed good-naturedly.

“Yeah, I know,” The young doctor rolled his eyes at the obvious statement. “But seriously, she was cute, approachable, smart.”

“So what happened?” Ron thought back to those days, introducing Felix to Kim, and obviously missing something.

Shaking his head, Felix rotated to face the trophy case, “Eh, she was way too nervous around my chair. Too scared of upsetting the cripple kid. By the time I thought she might see me instead of the wheels, well, there was Eric, and then there was you, which the Guy-Code totally disallows for… and then…”

“And then she came out of that walk-in closet she was living in.” the caterer surmised of the college age Kim who had taken experimentation to its logical conclusion.

“It was just a high school crush anyway. Yeah… but hey, I _did_ get to marry my high school sweetheart!” Felix enthused, turning back to face Ron. “By the way, thanks for giving me the pass on dating Zita… not that I ever want her to hear that we had such a conversation.”

Ron fist-bumped Felix on that and grinned, “Yeah, Girls just don’t get the Guy-Code. Don’t worry, secret’s safe with me.”

“Speaking of secrets,” Felix wheeled along with Ron amongst the sparse gatherings of alums, “You and Miss Moonstone?”

Rolling brown eyes, Ron sighed, “Her name is Joss. And no, nothing happened, for real!”

“But do you want something to happen?” the doctor looked up to Ron as they moved about.

“I-,” Ron scratched the top of his head uncertainly, “I dunno man. Besides, if she’s anything like her cousin, she likes girls a lot more than she likes guys. I mean, she’s kinda badical. But…”

“Forget about Kim’s baggage, man,” Felix counseled, “Whatever she’s got going on right now, it’s on her, not on you. I’m sure she’ll cool off on it sooner or later. Besides, can she even tell you what about it is wigging her out?”

“No,” Ron shook his head, thinking back on the two explosive encounters. “But… I think maybe she thinks Joss is too young for me?”

“Dude, The rule is half plus seven.” Felix rolled his eyes and used one of his mechanical grabbers to snag a mini-pizza, “Miss Moonstone, I mean Joss, is only like, five years younger than us, right? My parents were farther apart than that.”

Ron nodded. He wondered why in the world Kim couldn’t see that. It wasn’t like he was a thirty year old chasing a high school girl or something skeevy like that. He was twenty-eight, she was twenty-three… what was KP’s big?

“Speaking of Red,” Felix looked around, “Shouldn’t she be here by now?”

“Naw, I sent in a special asset to intercept her and try to cool her down.” Ron stage whispered, as though he was speaking about a secret mission and not just friendly machinations.

“This asset wouldn’t be about five-foot six inches tall, brown eyes, wavy black hair, and built like a Playhouse model, would she?” Felix chuckled, munching on the mini pizza that was far too good to be a simple pizza bagel.

“I can neither confirm nor deny my asset’s… erm… assets.” The blond demurred as he snagged a walking-nacho for himself. “But seriously… if you don’t stop talking about other women, Zita is gonna put a chock under your wheels, duder.”

The doctor laughed and shook his head, “She knows I like to look. It’s a hazard of constantly being at butt-level with so many comely young interns and nursing students. But she also knows I come home to her every night with no complaints.”

Ron shrugged. He doubted, if Kim and he were still together, that she would be nearly so forgiving.

“Ron!”

The blond man turned, only to be glomped by an even more blonde woman with the deepest blue eyes. She squeezed him big and tight and smiled.

“H- hey Tara! Long time no see!”

“No kidding!” She chided him, “Not since you catered my sister’s mitzvah! Gosh, that’s been like… seven years?” She nodded, rocking on her toes with excitement.

“Wow,” the caterer nodded, thinking back, “That was one of my first big gigs after school! It _has been_ a while”

“He means cooking school, not ninja school,” Felix smirked at the semi-public joke, “How’s it going, Tara?”

“Great!” the one-time cheerleader beamed, “But I wish I wasn’t showing so much.”

Rolling his eyes, the doctor elevated his chair slightly, “Oh, hush that stuff. You’re glowing. This is your… second, right? If I remember my Facespace right.”

“Yup!” She nodded, big eyes gleaming.

“Well take it from me, the second one is a LOT easier.” Felix confided, grinning. “Least, that’s what my wife says. I wouldn’t know, my waldoes do all the work.

Tara groaned and slapped his chair a little, “You would. Where is Zita anyways?”

“Well, the oldest has Mindstorms; then my little girl has tumbling. She’ll be here a bit later this evening.” Felix nodded, listing off the parental duties. “After dropping them off with the babysitter. Paying through the nose to get Hana Stoppable to sit, but it’s that, or weld the doors shut on my lab.”

Tara went over and grabbed one of the snack foods, returning as quickly, “So, Ron, still no ring?”

“We were just talking about that, actually,” Felix grinned at Ron’s expense.

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

Monique arrived at the Stich-N-Time cleaners just as Kim was going inside. She quickened her pace, intending to catch the ginger before she could make the turnabout and get back out.

“Girl, is that what you’re wearing today?” She made clear with a grin that she was teasing Kim and had no problems with her choice of an emerald green dress.

Sighing, Kim looked at the garment bag in her hand, “You know, Monique, I’m not sure I’m even going to go now…”

“Mmmhm?” She arched a brow, “Is this about the blowup with Ron?”

Breathing deeply, Kim nodded, trying to resist the urge to grip and wrinkle the shoulders of the dress in her hands.

“Wanna tell me about it?” the dark-skinned woman took the redhead by the hand and guided her out of the cleaners. “I still don’t get the whole thing.”

Grumbling under her breath, Kim shook her head as they walked, her body stiffening with resistance.

“Girlfriend,” Monique tutted as she guided them towards a local restaurant “You blew up at your life-long bestie for talking to a single and attractive girl. Now, you’re married, so unless something has been going on during missions that you’re not copping to, you have no claim on him.”

The redhead glared at her friend, almost snarling, “I am _not_ having an affair with Ron. Those stupid tabloids have said that for years and it’s never been true. Not then, not now.”

Entering the café grill, Monique led her friend to a booth, “Then help me understand what is going on, GF. Cause I don’t like seeing my friends fight.”

Kim sat there, grumbling and pointedly looking at the menu instead of responding. After a moment, she ordered the fried chicken salad with extra blue cheese dressing, and then looked at the booth advertisements instead of Monique.

“Girl, you’re avoiding me.” The fashion designer sighed with some irritation. She reached over and took away the folded display Kim was deliberately studying, “Now, talk.”

Blowing a breath through her lips, Kim rolled her eyes. After a long moment, she sighed again, “Joss is my cousin Monique. My cousin.”

“…and?” Monique began running a hand through her wavy hair in frustration at the disconnect.

Pawing a hand down her face, Kim shook her head. After a very long moment, she finally broke her silence, “My little cousin, Mo. I trained her better than that.”

“Better than what? To go to a bar and try to find a date? A nice bar that serves appetizers? As an adult? Which a lot of us do when we’re single?”

“Better than to-,” the redhead stopped, mid-sentence, and groaned into her hand, her face crinkling with disgust, “Oh my god, I was going to say better than to date Ron. I am such a ferociously horrible person.”

Monique sighed. Yeah, it was a profoundly nasty thing to think and to say about their friend. But she didn’t think Kim was a horrible person either. There was a middle ground in there somewhere.

“Alright…” She began after a moment, “Let’s start with you and Joss. Clearly there’s some history there.”

Shaking her head, Kim looked out the window at the street. “You never met Joss. She’s… a bit of a chameleon. She clings to role models and personal heroes, has most of her life. When she was a tween, it was me, then it was Ron… Later on it was Steve Rogers when I moved to New York and she came to visit… heck, for a few months when she was in high school it was even Shego.”

Taking a sip of the coffee she had ordered with her salad, the heroine sighed into the dark liquid, “I think it has something to do with her losing her mom when she was six. But don’t ask me, Shego is the one who has the child psych degree. Which really helped when Joss had a crush on her from a distance and kept sending texts and emails.”

Monique sat quietly and listened, nodding when appropriate and waiting for anything salient which could clue her in.

“Anyway… When it became clear that swinging from buildings and punching bad guys in the mouth wasn’t just a phase, and she wasn’t going to be an engineer, or a scientist, or a doctor or a lawyer like the rest of the family,” Kim shook her head, spearing a bit of crispy chicken out of her salad as soon as it was placed before her, “I took her under my wing and taught her the safe ways to do things. I gave her her first real grappler, to replace that homemade contraption she was using, for instance. Incidentally, when or if your family members show a tendency to throw themselves off of buildings, don’t take them to New York City and introduce them to Spider Man… _Bad Idea._ ”

“Noted,” the designer chuckled and nodded affirmatively. “But please, go on.”

Taking a large bite of her dressing-coated salad, Kim chewed and organized her thoughts. Wiping her mouth, she nodded more to herself, “Anyways… so I thought, maybe, I’d… I dunno… ugh, I dunno where I was going with this. Total brain train derailment!”

“It sounds to me,” Monique pontificated over the small cheese sticks she had ordered, “Like you feel like you are your cousin’s den mother. Which is good and all… but not when it comes to Ron! Let the girl decide her own way, huh? Did I get all over you when you started dating… ahem… you know what? Forget I said anything.”

“Look,” The heroine sighed at the old sore point being brought up yet again, “I get it… You don’t like my choice in partners. You don’t like her schooling, you don’t like her past, you don’t like her attitude, you don’t like her chest.”

“Oh no,” the wavy haired designer shook her head, “I like your wife’s breasts.”

Smiling, Kim speared her salad again, “Okay, fine, you’re the one who is famous for designing clothes for real women with real curves, I suppose you would like someone as full-figured as her.”

“No, Babygirl,” Monique fixed her with a surprisingly pointed look, “I mean, I like your wife’s breasts.”

It took the redhead a moment to process the gravitas behind the look.

“Wait… are you saying…” She looked askew at Monique, “I’ve known you how long… twelve, thirteen years? We went to college together for cripes sake! I came out of the closet to you first! How could you not tell me? How could _I_ not know?!”

“Okay, for one thing,” Monique blushed a bit, “How many times did you come in at two or three o’clock in the morning jet lagged and occasionally under the effects of foreign death rays? I had plenty of times to go to dinner with a cute girl… or guy, see a movie, and maybe even come back to the dorm and get lucky. Believe me, in that respect, you were the best dorm mate a girl could have wanted. So that’s how you could have _not_ noticed.”

Kim rubbed her face in her hands, trying to process. “Yeah, there were quite a few nights like that, weren’t there? Still… never? You never _once_ told me?”

“Well, I don’t really publicize my sexuality, Boo.” Monique finished the last of her cheese sticks, “I know I’m in fashion, but there’s still a lot of people in the world, even in my own industry, who are uncomfortable with things, especially when it involves a WOC.”

Kim sighed knowingly. Sometimes she felt fortunate that she and her partner were both physically and socially powerful enough to deal with ugliness head on. Not everyone could call on that toolset.

“And… there was a time when…” Monique chewed her lower lip, “When I thought, after you broke up with Ron that… Damn it girl, why you gotta make things hard on me?”

“Thought what?” the redhead frowned, “Monique, I think by now you know you can tell me anything, seriously.”

“Kim,” the fashion plate sighed, “When Ron and you broke up… especially when you started showing signs that you weren’t straight as you looked? I… kinda thought I could be the one to pick up the pieces. Show you the love that dare not speak its name.”

Blushing hotly, Kim shook her head. “So… uh… what happened? Why did you never tell me?”

“Well,” Monique smirked a bit, sipping her drink to swallow a sigh, “Think about that year? First Doctor Drakken was trying to go straight and ended up blowing up that research lab… Then there was that whole huge Gemini thing in Middleton that you had to go home for. And you got hurt and had to take sabbatical for several weeks. And by the time you got back? It was sophomore finals and you just HAD to do the double-majors course load in justice and poli-sci. It just seemed like there was never a good time to really address it with you. And coming back for junior year. Well, by then it was clear that you had come out to the entire world. And I wasn’t quite ready to be the other half of the new ‘out and proud’ Kim Possible. And by the time I thought I was ready? Well, by then you’d started chasing your bad girl. How was I gonna hold a candle to the dangerous woman with the claws and the hair and the skin tight suits and those crazy super-powers? Time and life just got away from me.”

“…Oh Monique…” Kim sighed at the thoughts swirling in her mind. Things that now looked completely different in retrospect to her from her sophomore year.

“So…” the dark-skinned woman smiled weakly, “Part of it is plain old jealousy. She got what I wanted. _Annnd_ part of it is, yeah I _really_ don’t like her choices, or her history; and get scared what she might do to you if she ever falls off the wagon. With her powers and her contacts?”

The redhead smiled and clasped Monique’s hands tightly, “Believe me, if she ever does go back to committing crime, I’ll be the very first one in line to stop her…. Mainly ‘cause, you know, I’m one of the few who can. But… oh god, why did I not know all this before about you? About us?”

Shaking her head, Monique grinned, “Like I said, not all of us are as out and proud as you are. I already get dinged for liking fast food and professional wrestling and being other-than-white. If people in certain circles had hard evidence that I was thoroughly Bi too? Ugh.”

Sniffing back a few sympathetic tears, Kim sighed. “Cheese and Rice Mo. What are we going to do with each other?”

“Well,” the darker woman grinned, “I wouldn’t kick you out of _my_ bed for eating crackers, but I think your wife might flay me alive. However, weren’t we talking about you and Ron?”

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

While Shego was finishing up whatever final touches she felt her anniversary gift needed, Joss took time to explore and photograph the mine for her clients. She made sure to avoid capturing Shego or her equipment, and only got the footprints as evidence that she had chased out a squatter.

She also found the source of the faint urine smell she had detected before. Shego had been using another branch of the mine as a toilet. Far enough away so as not to disturb her work area of course. The younger woman disregarded it. It would biodegrade on its own once she and Shego were gone from the cave. If nothing else, the new owners would shovel it up in a few weeks when they got down to seriously prospecting the pit. No different than any other campsite latrine in her opinion.

She made her way back to Shego’s location and finished watching her work. As she watched the work, she thought back on her high school days; and how Shego had been the first girl she’d had any kind of feelings about beyond ‘She’s so cool!’ Somehow, she’d managed to swipe Shego’s contact info from Cousin Kim, and had generally made a pest of herself. To no avail or contact back from the former criminal. She assumed eventually that Shego must have blocked her after the first gushing message.

“Quit staring at my ass,” Shego grumbled as she finished up the last of her polishing without looking back at Joss.

“Ah can’t really see your butt in that coat there, an’ I wasn’t starin’.” She rolled her eyes and huffed, making her way inside the side tunnel. “Asides, Appreciatin’ tha view is the least you can give me after clockin’ me or stunning me or whatever.”

With a shrug and a grunt, Shego began packaging her jewelry into a black box. “Long as you don’t take a picture and remember I’m spoken for.”

Joss took a moment to look around and appreciate the expensive compacting equipment she would probably never be able to afford. She identified a blinking red LED on the corner of the bench. That, she realized, must have been the ephemeral red glow which she had seen in the darkness of the mine before Shego knocked her out. Once again she was reminded how powerful basic human senses were.

And once again she was amazed how much faster Kim could process those senses than she could. Her cousin was verging on superhuman in her ability to sense things coming at her from the sides or behind and dodge them. Which probably explained how she had been “The girl who can do anything,” and “The woman who saved Middleton.”

She’d told Joss that Gemini’s missile hadn’t killed her because she had heard the click of it unlocking a split second before firing; and had been able to mostly dodge it even though it flew at almost three hundred miles an hour.

And, of course, had been able to fight Shego herself for all those years despite the villainess having literal super powers. She remembered Kim doing that interview with that TV host a few years back, including a blood test just to prove that she wasn’t a mutant, or the product of one of a dozen different secret experiments. That had been shortly before the wedding.

Sometimes she wondered if maybe, just maybe, there was some secret in the Possible family bloodline that produced all these super geniuses and wunderkind.

“And that does it. Here, hold this kiddo.” Shego handed her the black velvet jewelry box.

She turned back to the walled work bench and organized the tools on it carefully. Once that was done, she pressed a button on one corner and stood back. As promised, the wall and the bench rapidly began to collapse inwards on themselves; folding over and clicking into place at multiple invisible joints as some parts shrank out of sight entirely. Within about ninety seconds, the entire mobile workshop had collapsed into a package about the size and shape of a shoe box. It took all of the work light with it and plunged them into darkness.

Fishing a flashlight out of one of her coat’s pockets, Shego clicked it on and collected the package from the floor. “Alright, good as it was when I came in. Happy?”

“Amused at least,” Joss smirked and nodded in the gloom. “Shall we?”

The two women made their way the roughly one mile up and out of the darkness of the abandoned mine, and into the light of the late afternoon. Blinking, Joss pulled on a pair of sunglasses against the glare after so long in the deep pit.

She checked her phone after turning off her own light, and verified the time, “Alraght, It’s three thirty now. If you all still want me to help you out with this whole thing, Ah need a time to meet up with you at tha school.”

Taking the box from her cohort, Shego dropped it into a hoverpod which appeared out of thin air next to her, “Active camouflage retro-reflectors. And let’s say, three hours. Six thirty should have them all sitting down for dinner or whatever presentations. Sound good?”

Joss nodded her agreement, and paused to appreciate the pod and how it shimmered into existence. One more fancy tool that was outside her price range. “Sounds good to me. Meet ya there.”

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

Kim really didn’t want to continue this discussion. She hadn’t wanted to start it in the first place; and now in the face of Monique’s revelations, she _really_ didn’t want to get back into things like Ron and Joss and high school romances gone bad.

“Now, what the heck is so wrong with Ron being into Joss, or vice versa?” Monique probed artfully.

Sighing and shaking her head, Kim focused on the last scraps of her salad. Eventually, however, she had wiped even her plate clean in her avoidance.

After a painfully long moment during which she swallowed her pride, Kim decided that if she didn’t give voice to her feelings on the issue, that her friends would all pester her till the day she died; and that that might cause even more rifts.

“Fine. Look,” She locked eyes with Monique, “It’s not that Ron is not my best friend in the world, and that I wouldn’t take a bullet for him, and vice versa… But, he’s not… good boyfriend material.”

It was clear from the look on her face that the fashion plate wanted to say something, but she held her tongue for the moment.

“I don’t want Joss to have to go through what I did, Okay?” Kim looked away in shame at the admission, “Even when Ron tried really hard, he wasn’t great as a love interest. The same movies all the time, never dressing up, never having any money. Rarely thought about what I wanted to do, insulted my interests and yours by extension. Just… Ugh. And beyond all that. I don’t want Joss getting trapped in the friendzone with someone because she keeps hoping that things will get better.”

Monique chewed her lower lip a long moment after Kim fell silent. She rapped her long nails on the plate before her, considering the redhead.

Finally, she blew a breath through her lips and frowned. “I ought to slap the taste out of your mouth for insulting my other best friend like that, Girl.”

Rolling her eyes, she slid both of their plates to the edge of the table. “One, do you not think that you being a lesbian in confusion might not have had a _lot_ to do with why you and Ron never worked despite almost three years of trying? That maybe your subconscious expectation that he be a girl, and that he be one who liked all that you like might not have colored the whole experience? Two, that was eight years ago. More if we go all the way back to when you two first hooked up. Don’t you think it’s possible that he might have matured just a _little_ in the past near-decade? He’s traveled the world for mocha sake! I’d like to think he maybe learned a thing or two about being a better partner since he smashed alien space ships out of the sky as an eighteen year old kid.”

Kim made a derisive sound through her lips and waited her turn to talk, “Mo, I’m pretty sure that he hasn’t been in a single relationship since we broke up. The only two girls I know he was interested in all that time was Zita, who’s off the market in more ways than one… and erm, his student advisor in Japan, who got married while Ron and I were still together. There hasn’t been anyone else he’s mentioned to me in the last eight years. He didn’t even bring a Plus One to my wedding.”

“And maybe he was just waiting for someone particular to come along, hmmm?” the black woman countered pointedly, her frown deepening. “Maybe he hasn’t found that special someone yet to be his SO. I speak from experience here, GF, you are one _tough_ act to follow. You cast a long shadow in life. Heck, Josh Mankey still considers you his great muse!”

“Oh god…” Kim paled slightly as a thought occurred that she had been studiously avoiding until now. “Does Ron think Joss is a second chance with me?”

“Oh for taffeta sake!” Monique didn’t smack the redhead, but she did flick ice water in her face to get her attention, “No! They met like twice according to what the word on the street says. Ron just has a thing for ginger girls. It’s Not About You!”

Sitting back, glaring at her friend of more than a decade, Monique sighed loudly, “GF, you need a good Therapist. Ask yourself this. If it was anyone other than your cousin, say, Justine Flanner’s little sister who’s about the same age, would you be so F2BT about this? Would you be trying to make sure Ron so much as never looked at _her_ again by ambushing him at his hotel? Girl, you’ve got enough baggage for the TTA terminal at Middleton International. And I think you’re just unloading it on Ron like you always have. Ron may not be perfect, but he shoulders a lot more for you than you like to admit.”

Taking a deep breath, she gave Kim a level eye, “In fact, did you ever even tell him you were sorry you were not into him that way? That maybe it was _you_ wasting three years of _his_ life because you were confused? Remember I was in the room for the breakup. It seems to me that you palmed it off as a mutual thing. You were both trying; but only Ron was, ultimately, invested in the LTP of the two of you being HEA.”

The heroine ducked her head in shame as that memory was brought up. Trying to explain to Ron that they just weren’t working; still not quite sure if it was because of the way she looked at the girls on campus or if it was just Ron being too much like a brother for them to work. Of asking Monique to stay because she was afraid that if she didn’t have backup on the stich; that she might chicken out and continue on as Ron’s long-distance sorta-girlfriend and partner.

Reaching out, Monique took her hand, trying to tone down her rhetoric and be a friend to Kim as well as to Ron, “Look Boo, you are the girl who single-handedly fought your way through fifty henchmen and took a missile bullet thingy in the shoulder before taking down Gemini and saving Middleton from subjugation… And you are about the strongest person I know to put up with what the tabloid rags call you and your spouse… but… you got damage and you need to face it yourself. Ron may not even like Joss as a girlfriend; but he deserves the chance to at least find out himself without you hanging over his shoulder like a toxic cloud.”

Kim sniffed back a few tears, shaking slightly and clenching her fists as her emotions warred inside. Finally sniffling in defeat, she grabbed a napkin and indelicately blew her nose, hunching over as sadness and regret washed over her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I still feel like this chapter is a bit rough, but I wanted to get it out before the holiday weekend (July 4 in the US) Those of you who have been on the Anti-Kim bandwagon will start to see that she has issues that go beyond Ron, I hope.   
> Chapters 5 and 6 may be delayed a week due to IRL complications. I will do my best to get Chapter 5 out next week, but no guarantees. And as always, reviews = love and Resharing is Caring.


	5. Chapter 5

“Okay,” Felix rolled up to the door to the kitchen, concern showing on his face, “It’s five thirty, and still no Kim.”

He had reason to be worried. As valedictorian and salutatorian respectively, he and Kim were generally expected to give a word or three on the state of the class ten years on. No Kim was going to leave a rather gaping hole in his wife’s carefully scheduled program.

Ron was about to offer to give Felix his phone to provide her number so that he could call her, until he realized it was _still_ in Joss’s motel room on the other end of town. He pulled his ron-com put of a pocket in his apron and looked at it.

“Well, I’m not sure she wants to hear from me…” chewing his lower lip, he thumbed a blue button on the face, “let’s see if I can get a lil intel before I call into the lion’s den.”

After a moment, a familiar round face appeared on the screen, “Yeah Ron, what’s up?”

“Wade, man…” he rubbed the back of his neck nervously, as though he was doing something dangerous by talking to the hacker, “Can you tell me where KP is? She’s MIA and we’re kind of expecting her here at the community center.”

“What, do you think I _still_ have her chipped?” Wade repeated the decade old joke, “Her wife ripped that out years ago.”

Rolling his eyes, Ron tried not to sigh. He wasn’t in the mood for humor about his ex tonight. “No sex jokes please, Wade. Just, can you find her?”

“No problem, Ron” the round hacker nodded, poking away at his screens, “Jaime kinda filled me in on the fireworks going on. Let’s see here… Kim is… Oh! Looks like she is on her way to you, Ron”

“I hope that means everything is hakuna,” Ron muttered as he nodded, “Alrighty, thanks Wade. We’ll look for her.”

Thumbing off the display, he turned to Felix in the doorway between the kitchen area and the convention floor, “Well there ya go, redhead inbound.”

The wheeled doctor didn’t seem to be completely mollified, but nodded, “Alright. You going to stay in here?”

“Wish I could,” Ron cast his eyes around, “But I’m sure a few people want to see me for something other than a tray full of snacks.”

“Well, you have me and Zita for backup if you need it,” Felix nodded and rolled away from the kitchen door to greet a few former classmates.

“Dude, I’m gonna need it,” The blond bemoaned as he looked on the last of the meal prep.

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

“Do I look okay?”

Monique paused at a stop light to look over at her passenger, “Girl, whoever taught you makeup did a better job than I did teaching you fashion.”

Rolling her eyes, Kim slapped Monique’s shoulder, “Well, she has a lot of practice dealing with high cheekbones and disguises. Seriously, do I look like I’ve been crying?”

Again Monique had to wait for a pause in traffic to look in earnest, “Well, a lil visine wouldn’t hurt you, Boo. But no, you look fabulous as always.”

The redhead blushed, but continued checking herself in the visor mirror. She futzed with her hair nervously, trying not to chew her lips and screw up her makeup. Finally, in frustration, Monique reached over and clipped the visor shut with authority.

“You’re fine girl. If your wife were here, she’d smack you for pestering that eyeshadow.” The fashion plate rolled her eyes as she pulled into the parking structure.

Finding a parking slot was fairly easy; as the three hundred odd graduates, spouses, and guests hardly touched the civic center’s actual capacity. After that, Monique dug in her purse, and produced a vial of eyedrops.

“Thanks,” Kim took the drops and deftly applied them, letting her head hang back until they’d fully absorbed into her eyes.

“Now, before we go in there,” the darker skinned woman paused pointedly, “Are you going to behave yourself? Do I need to call Ron and tell him to hide?”

Kim sighed heavily and then blew a breath through her bangs. She steadied herself for a moment, smoothing her emerald dress in place again after getting out of the car, “I… I don’t know if tonight is the right time or place to deal with… that. But I will not do anything to set anything off. Pixie Scouts honor.”

Monique nodded resolutely and turned to escort the redhead into the venue, “God, I hope Bonnie isn’t here… The last thing I need is her seeing us side by side, GF.”

“If she does,” Kim growled darkly, “Then forget my promise not to start something. My wife would not forgive me if I didn’t smack Bonnie after what she said at the five-year.”

There was a buzzing at her ear, and Kim scowled. Reaching up, she squeezed one of the faux emerald studs. “This better be important.”

“Erm, ah…” Came the subdued voice next to her ear, “Hey Kim, it’s Wade. Normally I wouldn’t bother to break in on you on a weekend off, but you see…”

The heroine waited for an explanation. Finally, sheepishly, one came.

“Well, you see. In order to streamline the stealth communicators, I had to do away with a lot of features, including my ability to remote control them.” Wade explained, his voice uncertain. “So in lieu of that, I programmed into them a long list of keywords which would activate them automatically when mentioned in your voice. Because, um, well, since these are for stealth use, I wanted to be able to talk to you and Ron in the event you were in a delicate spot and couldn’t manually trigger them. I never got to give you the list of key words though.”

Sighing and trying not to curse under her breath, Kim pinched the bridge of her nose, “Fine Wade. I get it. Neat feature. What did I say to set them off, and why did you feel the need to buzz in?”

Again there was a nervous silence. Finally the hacker admitted, “Bonnie. You said Bonnie. Now I know you’re not in danger… but, given the… delicateness of the last two days, I thought I would call in and give you at least a little _good_ news.”

“Which is?” the redhead tried not to scowl at the voice whispering in her ear.

“You don’t have to worry about Bonnie showing up to the reunion.” Wade confirmed quickly, sensing his charge’s patience wearing dangerously thin. “She’s currently in a Spanish jail along with her father-in-law. That was Ron’s last assignment before this weekend.”

Shaking her head, Kim tried not to smile vindictively. It was unbecoming after all. “Thanks you for the info, Wade. Though, perhaps you should expand the trigger to her full name, just so you’re not accidentally privy to any more bitching sessions. Kim Out.”

“What was it? Emergency?” Monique frowned at her side, having only heard Kim’s half of the conversation.

“No,” the heroine shook her head, “Just an update for me. There will be no Bonnie-slapping tonight.”

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

It was no problem for Joss to get into the Middleton Civic Center. All she had to do was flash her ID as a Possible family member and it was like a golden pass. The dark red hair and perky Possible nose certainly didn’t hurt either. Fortunately she’d had time to get back to her motel to change her clothes to something a bit more appropriate than her mission outfit. Everyone else was dressed relatively nicely; and showing up in cargo shorts, sport boots, and a safari shirt probably would have drawn some looks.

Once inside, she followed the instructions Shego had given her for the surprise. Breaking away from the public area, she made her way back into the employee sections of the center. Since this was not a huge athletic event, concert, or conference; the back halls were predictably deserted. No one was there to question her presence or to try to dissuade her.

She expected some resistance at the press both, because she knew there had to be some kind of retrospective video, or some room music, or something going on; but in fact found everything inside to be automated once she had defeated the door lock. She wasn’t sure if automation was the standard setup for the building, or if it was the work of one of the alumni, or if maybe Kim’s friends had a hand in it; but whatever it was, it shouldn’t be too difficult to override.

She also acquainted herself with the security system. She would need to be able to disable it at the word, and then to reactivate it and get out of the press box before anyone came looking for potential accomplices. She found the configuration to be simple enough and nothing like a high-security setups in a private research laboratory or museum; places she’d had to break into or out of before. Once she had memorized the proper order of button presses, she took a breath. She sat down in one of the task chairs in front of the big window, careful to sit far enough back to avoid being seen from the convention floor, and awaited Shego’s signal.

All the while she hoped that no one mentioned to Kim that a relative was here as her Plus One.

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

Felix saw Kim and Monique enter the convention floor, and moved to grab Zita from the table where she was speaking with Alex Sapphic-Jones and her partner.

It was hard to miss Kim; her dress was a bit daring by the standard of the evening, and she was also the only natural redhead in the graduating class. At her side of course was Monique, ever fashionable in a crème-colored pant suit with the blouse open to a suggestive, but not daring, second button. The doctor knew that a few of the cattier classmates would instantly latch on to the two of them entering together, but frankly, that was beyond his purview.

If people were dumb enough to cast aspersions on Kim Possible, it was on their heads; or the heads of their insurance providers.

“I swear, that girl could make a potato sack look good,” Zita complained as she walked beside her husband towards the pair. “Especially if Monique designed it.”

“Says the woman who wears designer sweats and yoga pants to the office and still stops traffic?” Felix rolled his eyes, taking her hand and squeezing it, “Cast not the first stone, babe. Those hips of yours don’t lie, and I’ll take them over Red and Mocha there any day.”

“As if either of them would have you, Papi?” Zita snickered under her breath.

“Hey, I may be married, but I like to think I still know my way around the ladies,” he complained.

“You like to think a lot of things, mi amor,” she rolled her chocolatey eyes, smirking, “Doesn’t mean you’re right about any of them. Like the timing of my cycle?”

“Good grief you’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” He sighed heavily at the old line, trying not to deviate course as he palmed his face.

“When she’s out of college, I might let it go.”                                                                                                                                                         

A moment later, they intercepted Kim and Monique at the check-in station. Felix made the customary remark, “As if anyone could forget either of you two if you skipped the nametags.”

Kim smirked and shook her head. Monique made a semi-rude but playful gesture at the blatant flattery.

Zita embraced the redhead in a tight hug and grinned, “There’s mi pequeña hada! How is it going?”

”Better now that you renamed the Spritekin into something a bit less fluffy sounding,” Kim laughed and squeezed the latina gamer mogul back, “Incidentally, am I ever going to stop getting the fan mail?”

“Ah mí musa,” she rolled her dark almond eyes, “Probably when Josh stops drawing you in armor with a flaming sword and barbed fairy wings.

“Mí Musa?” Kim matched the eye roll and posed as if holding the fantasy sword she had been modeled with for the latest game release, “His musa more like… he’s lucky my wife enjoys the chainmail bikini look.”

“I heard she also enjoyed that couch-sized pinup he did of you with the Glaive of Eternity.” Zita smirked, resting her hands on her hips.

“Yeah, to the tune of three hundred fifty thousand dollars,” The ginger grinned archly, “But, for a good cause, and a lot more appetizing than Ron’s Zombie-Palooza no-shower-for-a-week marathon. Either way, Cancer gets a little closer to being cured. Even if I do have to look at a life-sized version of myself in chrome plate and bare thighs every time I go into the workshop now.”

“Chica I would so not put up with that from Felix,” the game designer shook her head. “I am nobody’s fap fantasy.”

Monique rolled her eyes at that, knowing that the gamer queen of Middleton High had more than a few fanboys of her own; but she held her tongue. She tapped Kim on the shoulder and indicated she was making her way further into the convention center.

The heroine waved her darker friend off and sized Felix up in his chair, “So what, you don’t have a photoshop of her in her monk’s garb hanging in the office?”

He held up his hands gamely, “You heard her, she’d eat me alive, Red.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing, Wheels,” Kim grinned wickedly, earning faintly shocked looks from her class mates. “What? I can make jokes when I want to, you know.”

“I guess times really do change, Kim,” Felix shook his head, “Time was your head would have exploded trying to pull off that line. Marrying a career criminal has been good for you.”

The redhead rolled her green eyes and smirked, “Yeah, everyone takes the cheap shots at my wife. Couldn’t it possibly be _me_ who corrupted _her_?”

“Hmmm, let me think,” Zita pressed a finger to her lips, “One who wears gallant white and blue body armor; one who wears skin tight spandex and kitten claws… who corrupted who?”

All three rolled their eyes at that. Kim moved to follow Felix onto the main floor as Zita moved off to greet the trio of cheerleaders trying to sneak in around their former head. Faith, Hope, and Marcella had been hoping to avoid the planning committee chair and catch up with the redhead, but were thwarted when the cheer captain moved to one side and exposed them.

The heroine moved with Felix amongst the floor, trying to catch sight of Monique again in the growing throng of alumni. She didn’t see her fashionista cohort, but of course saw and waved at least two dozen other faces who she mentally tallied to greet in person later. She subconsciously touched her faux emerald studs, thankful that Donna Bonita Senior wouldn’t be amongst them. And that Tara and most of the other cheer squad had finally fallen out of her thrall after a decade and her current criminal exploits.

Speaking of Tara, she found the slightly pregnant blonde perched by the snacks table, trying to demurely consume what looked to be her fifth pizza bagel.

“Miss Spencer,” She smiled brightly, kissing Tara on both cheeks, “You look radiant as always. Extra, even.”

“Misses Possible,” Tara returned the kisses, smiling brightly, “You look as fabulous as ever. Dressed up for the S.O.?”

Sighing and blowing a breath through her bangs, Kim tried not to seem flustered, “She’s not coming. Stayed in New York to work on our project by herself.”

“Problems on the sixty eighth story, Kim?” the platinum blonde frowned, subconsciously rubbing her belly.

“Oh… just the usual. She took a job I didn’t agree with, cattiness ensued, things were said that shouldn’t have been.” The redhead bemoaned, running off the situation as if it were a practiced routine.

Looking around a moment, setting her half-finished fifth snack aside, Tara guided Kim a bit further into the corner. “Are you sure they didn’t need to be said?”

Kim smiled sadly, shaking her head, “We chased around for years before we finally came to it. We can speak entire soliloquys without a word when it needs to be said. No, these were things just said because she was pissed off and I was moody. The fact that our project has been stuck in neutral for a year didn’t help. Ferociously stuck.”

“You two really can talk like that, can’t you?” the blonde sighed, shaking her head. “That spring… when you were in the hospital. When you and I… Well, you were so shy about it. Every time. I figured it was just because you hadn’t come out yet. But, now I realize that it’s because you communicate sooooo differently from anyone else. I still can’t read people the way you do. A flick of the hair to me is just someone trying to get their bangs out of their eyes. But with you? It’s you scanning the entire room in front of you with just a casual glance or something. Wow, that there’s two people like that around is just…”

Kim blushed in spite of herself at the memory of the spring she had flown back to Middleton to stop Gemini and gotten hurt; and all the changes in her life that had brought. Part of her wondered what things might have been like; if she had stayed in Colorado instead of going back to school. It was something that they both kept to themselves to this day, for a number of reasons; but as Jaime always said, the view looking back in the side mirror was always 20/20, and closer than it appeared.

Then the stuff with Monique this afternoon. Kim suddenly wondered if she was as good at reading people and body language as Tara credited her with.

“Well, point is, I was tweaked, and may have done some damage. Some serious damage. Item of evidence number one, she’s fifteen hundred miles away.”

“And what about Ronnie?” Tara shook her head softly, “I heard through the grapevine that there was a blowup?”

“Goddess, has everybody heard about that?” the heroine muttered darkly, glancing about herself with practiced ease. “I realize that I was being a ferocious cunt and projecting on him, among other things. Have… um. Have you seen him?”

Rolling turquoise eyes, the blonde tisked, “He was in the kitchen last I saw him, duh. He’s probably prowling the other end of the stage, avoiding you and Miss Mo.”

“Why would he be avoiding Monique?”

“Kim,” Tara shook her head, “Between the two of you, Miss Monique has always had your back over his. Except when it comes to these walking nachos that is.”

“Oh good grief, not today she doesn’t.” the redhead sighed, “See if you can corral him towards me, would you? I need to eat the gourmet crow he’s serving.”

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

Ron was walking through one of the ‘employees only’ corridors, trying to get around the throng of alumni without being seen and accosted about one of his recipes. Normally he didn’t mind stopping to talk about how to avoid the soapy taste of cilantro in Mexican cuisine, but today his nerves were shot and he had only so many sporks to spend, and some of those were now dedicated to finding Kim for Felix, even if it meant his head.

Then he stopped. Something had caught his nose.

He knew that scent. He’d had it in his senses just last night. Sage, Sandalwood, and Ginger. A spicy, earthy scent with the faintest undercurrent of licorice root.

That was Joss’s… perfume? Was that the right word? Women had so many smelly products they applied anymore; spritzes and body washes and perfumes and dabs and scented makeups and…

But that was definitely Joss. He remembered it very well, because it was so unusual and not particularly feminine compared to what the other women he knew wore. Kim literally bathed in cucumber and melon; and Monique wore this powdery fresh scent which she said reminded her of her grandmother. Yori, uniquely, wore no scent at all unless she was working under cover, leaving her natural note of skin and a complete absence when she left a room. Kim’s wife favoured flowery scents that reminded him of his own grandmother; and his mom routinely smelled of oranges. He remembered this particular scent because he had got a nose full of this smell when Joss had been half in his lap last night watching the latest Bricks movie, and he found it slightly intoxicating.

Ron began to follow his schnozzle in the direction of the scent, heading away from the floor-side entry he had been walking for. He made it half way down a new corridor before he lost the smell. Ninja training and the nose of a chef certainly made him a cut above, but he was no bloodhound. A faint whiff of perfume, no matter how unusual, was about the limit of what he could follow short of literally putting his nose to the ground.

Rufus popped his head up out of a cavernous apron pocket after a moment, noticing that the stall in progress had stopped rocking him back and forth in the warm hidey-hole. Looking around, the rodent didn’t see what the detour was about, and so began chittering at his human about where they had to be and the schedule they had to keep if the class dinner of crouton breaded tilapia with lemon was to be delivered on time.

Shaking his head at the chastisement, Ron glanced around one more time. Short of sniffing doorknobs to see if the scent was on one of them; he had no indications on where, or even if, his dangerous liaison was in the building for some reason. “Right buddy, sorry… got distracted. Gotta find KP, right?”

An irritable nod from the rodent prodded Ron into moving back down the hallway and towards the convention floor. Glancing at his smart watch, he smacked his forehead. He had food to retrieve from the tables so people wouldn’t over-eat before dinner, he suddenly realized. Kim would have to wait and bow to the demands of catering for a few more minutes, perhaps thankfully.

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

Kim was about three steps from chewing the scenery, or calling in orbital surveillance. Normally she could find Ron by following the explosions and the chaos. But today didn’t seem to be such a day. Instead, as she bid goodbye to Hope, Marcella, and Faith, she again got word that she must have just missed him, and to try in that direction over there.

Sighing, Kim whipped out her traditional phone, calling in the last few of her aces short of actual strategic assistance.

 

TO TARA: [any sign of the target]

 

[He was just by here to take the pizza bagels away before dinner :( ]

 

[kitchen then gotcha]

 

TO MO: [hes headed to kitchen cut., him off]

 

[on it girl]

 

[inbound on your 2oclock]

 

[Ill heard him that way]

 

TO TARA: [kitchen, circle around on im]

 

[roger that my favorite redhead]

 

Kim blushed at the last message, but put the phone away. She had more important things to focus on than the temptations of the now, however ephemeral those were.

It took about twenty seconds to corral Ron at the service door to the kitchen. They got unexpected help in the form of Zita coming up from behind, trying to run down her schedule.

The blond man looked around and groaned darkly to himself. Rufus had the good sense to abandon chef; hopping out of Ron’s apron pocket and scurrying into the kitchen with a gulp, looking for his pet ball to take cover in.

“Oh, yay, a meeting of the former love interests club,” Ron muttered to himself with a sigh. At least he had a legitimate excuse to dispose of two of them quickly. “Zita, here you see Kim, so you can go and report to Felix, yeah?”

Taking another breath, he fished his roncom out of an apron pocket, blew some flour off of it, and handed it to Monique, “I know you know how to work one of these. Pin is 4242. Look at the last picture, it’s a design challenge for you to update, put it on my tab. I can put you in touch with the client later.”

That left him flanked by a redhead and a blonde as Monique and Zita made their retreats. Which to risk first? Redhead wrath or pregnant hormones?

Making a panicked decision, Ron spun and hugged Tara tightly, “So great to see you! And obviously you cook up buns better than I do if that belly is any indication!”

Tara awkwardly hugged him back even though she had seen and greeted him just two hours before, “Well, some days it feels more like your super rich pound cake than a simple bun, but thank you.”

She looked over Ron’s shoulder with a slightly confused expression at Kim.

The redhead rolled her eyes. That kind of avoidance was typical Ron. She mouthed at the platinum blonde that Ron was stalling.

In a show of backbone she hadn’t used since she blew Bonnie Rockwaller off when she called for bail money the last time, Tara reached up and pinched the underside of Ron’s arm, “Kim wants to talk to you, now stop ducking her silly!”

Ducking his head and rubbing the back of his neck, Ron reluctantly turned out of Tara’s grasp to face his recent nemesis.

“So, ahhhhhhhahah,” he finally forced himself to look at some part of Kim other than her shoes.

“Oh, will you drop it!” She snapped. Then she seized him in a fierce hug, “I’m so sorry Ron. For everything. I can’t really explain it all, at least not without clearance from the little woman, but… ugh… there’s been so much crap going on lately… And then there was that fire. And then you and Joss I guess… I dunno, you stepped on a big smelly landmine that wasn’t meant for you and…”

He pushed her back to look her in the eyes as she started to babble in a very un-Kim-like manner, “It’s okay KP. I know that’s just you.”

Behind them Tara made her move to exit, sensing this was a very private moment. Ron sensed her going, but didn’t move to stop her.

“Actually, maybe that’s part of the problem. I know that that’s how you are; so I just let it go, instead of saying something about it.” He sighed, shaking his head a bit. “I knew that you’d eventually figure out what was wrong and that it would blow over. And that’s my fault. Maybe if I coulda stepped up to the plate and said that you were wrong…. About a bunch of stuff, instead of just rolling with it, we wouldn’t have lost a whole day of time to hang out and just be us?”

Kim sniffed and nodded, trying not to let her tears fall and damage her makeup, since it wasn’t her combat-proof never-run mascara but just the showey stuff. “Maybe… No, no maybe, Monique is right. And you’re right. I do need some kind of… something. Help or therapy or a pill or… who knows. I shouldn’t let stuff build up like this inside. And I shouldn’t aim it at my besties.”

“Well, I do know a guy who knows a thing or two about meditation and green tea,” the blonde man grinned. “Oh, and Master Sensei could help too!”

Giggling a bit, Kim lightly slapped him in the arm. “I’m thinking more along the lines of…. Well we’ll talk about it. Now, where does Zita have me sitting? Not on the dais I hope?”

Ron showed her that no, the dais itself was not even for dinner, and set her down at a random table. And just in time too, as his smartwatch buzzed on his wrist that it was time to start with the main course of dinner.

Unhanding his again best-friend, he quickly made his way back to the kitchen to give his crew a spit-shine before they wheeled out the main course for the evening.

Meanwhile, outside of the Middleton Civic Center, a retired criminal sat and plotted how to get herself and her big gift inside without raising a huge scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Well, this chapter needed more than a little polishing (finishing up really) to get out, even with my extra week. And no, this is not all that there is to go between Ron and Kim, or Kim and Tara, Shego, Monique, or anyone really. But it IS the penultimate chapter, and chapter 6 will close out this story. I do have some very vague ideas about things to do with a sequel, but in truth, nothing that yet resembles an actual plot. So we’ll see what we see; and remember reviews = love and Sharing is Caring!


	6. Chapter 6

Joss scooted forward to the edge of the press window and looked down on the assembled crowd below. Everyone was getting seated for dinner. She knew from a program she had snagged that it was fish and fries with greens.

Not normally one of her favourites, having been raised on Montana beef. But since she had not had anything since shortly after dropping Ron off at his hotel this morning, it sounded great.

She spotted Kim in her green dress and nodded to herself, seeing that she was seated with her friends and awaiting her dinner.

Just as the auburn haired cowgirl was about to sit back to wait, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She peeled it out and looked at the alerts.

 

[press play]

 

That was the signal.

Joss circumvented the automated house music and plugged in a thumb drive with the appropriate file on it.

 

_♫_ _Ooh, yeah, yeah_

_I'm your basic average girl_

_And I'm here to save the world_

_You can't stop me cause I'm_

_Kim Pos-si-ble_ _♫_

Down on the floor, heads swiveled around a bit at the sudden change in music tempo and abrupt cutoff of one song for another. It wasn’t a huge reaction, given the kitsch nature of the pop song to their most famous classmate. Most assumed it was just part of the festivities or someone’s tongue-in-cheek choice.

Kim herself was doing her best to demure despite the knowing glances cast her way where she sat.

And then the fireworks started inside the building; great green plumes of light and loud bangs which got a lot more attention than the music had.

“Oh lord.” Palming her face, Kim sighed and shook her head.

Shego appeared amidst the chaos, standing on the dais. She was in the current iteration of her usual green catsuit, which included a matching black-and-green long coat over top and a few extra pouches here and there on straps.

A quick sniff of the air indicated to the redhead that these weren’t fireworks. It was Shego engaging in some theatrics.

There was a thump-thump sound as Shego tapped on the microphone on its stand. “Ah, good, sound check checks out.”

Casting electric green eyes about, she smirked playfully, “Well, has it really been ten years since all that crap huh?”

The people in the audience were obviously confused. Those with a quicker whit, recognizing Shego for who she was, turned their eyes to Kim seeking clarification.

Kim saw Zita Renton de Florez about to charge up front and demand an explanation, and rested a hand on the table, preparing to get up and intercept a pending possible disaster.

Shego beat them both to the punch, as if timing out her speech, “But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here tonight to remind a certain redhead about the good old days.”

As if on cue, the music faded down to nothingness, and the eyes of the class of 2007 all turned on the once-teen heroine. Kim felt as if she was in the spot light, even though the room lightning was normal. She did her best not to shoot a deadly glare at the older woman as she rose fully to her feet and smoothed her dress out.

She wasn’t totally sure if Shego was still retired at this point, given their harsh words the last time she had seen the villainess; but she figured that, amidst three hundred odd civilians, it was probably better not to provoke anything. She quickly cast an eye about, looking for Ron and Rufus as she moved; hoping they had her back in case things went hinky.

Smiling in spite of herself, she took the two short steps up to the dais and approached Shego. It may have been ten years, but she still had cheerleader training and knew how to cast her voice for the audience to hear her, “And what do I need reminding of?”

“Why,” Shego enthused, playing to the crowd as well, reaching into her long emerald and onyx coat and producing a large ring box, “Just all the fun we once had, of course!”

She opened it up, revealing the hand crafted KP ornament inside, which lit up and sparkled. “See here? A different piece from all of our adventures together! A few of which took place with your loving classmates here!”

Kim had tensed just a moment when Shego reached inside her jacket. When the former villainess revealed a big commemorative gewgaw, the redhead let a breath go. She approached Shego and examined the logo with a quick and well-trained eye. It appeared to be exactly what the pale woman claimed it to be. She recognized the spider-legs of the modulator whirring ineffectually as the e-ink background of the thing now served to color the medallion. A moment’s imagining placed a few other bits of the design, including the tell-tale blue-steel color of Lorwardian metal.

As she took the jewelry box from Shego, the older woman threw an arm around her in comradery. In the moment, she leaned just close enough for the redhead to hear her alone, “Look, not all of us have such squeaky clean histories that we can turn down a phone call from Nick Fury, alright? I couldn’t tell you that until after the job was done. Now, smile for the cameras!”

Kim bit back a sigh. She knew that the one-eyed operator tended to drive a very hard bargain, particularly with people he thought he held leverage over. Seemed like she was 0-3 on trusting people this weekend.

Kim held her hand up with Shego’s entwined to show the crowd that there were no hard feelings, and they all applauded, some more enthusiastically than others.

“Oh, and incidentally princess?” Shego continued her stage whisper past smiling pearly white teeth, “Say hello to your wife for me? It’s been forever since the two of us could get together and talk shop, given what an unfit influence on her _you_ are.”

Holding her tongue, Kim tried not to think about the ways Shego might be a far worse influence, and questioned if this was an exaggeration on her part or a real concern.

At least her wife wasn’t here at the moment to egg the emerald woman on anyway.

With another sudden bang and flash, Shego was gone from the space next to her. TRhe redhead knew that if she looked up right now, she’d see Shego’s legs vanishing into the scoreboard she had undoubtedly dropped down from above the civic center main floor.

But she didn’t glance up. The crowd could enjoy the quick disappearing act for what it was, a flashy bit of showmanship.

“Well, ahem, thank you Shego,” She made a show of waving away some imagined smoke and actual plasma, “For the thoughtful gift. Now, I think it’s ah… time for dinner from our lovely caterer, Ron Stoppable Kitchens!”

 

**_-BH-_ **

 

Joss marveled at Shego’s get away. That had to be at least a seven foot gap to jump up before she could even grab the nearly invisible mono-filament line and handle dangling down from the score box. And with the fireworks display, she would have been hard pressed to see it pulled off, even knowing where to look.

Then again, Joss was used to people who really _could_ disappear on command, not just make it look like it.

She popped the USB drive out of the console and restarted the house music. Then she set about making her escape, ignoring the buzzing of her phone in her pocket this time in the interest of getting out quickly.

She always wore gloves of treated calf-skin on the job, so there were no fingerprints to wipe out. She also wasn’t hugely concerned with DNA or the link, so simply went back out the door after turning back on the house music and giggling at how flustered cousin Kim looked.

“Serves her right,” She snorted, still a bit touchy about the events of the night before.

Still, the whole thing had been fun to be a part of…

Her instructions were to dispose of the thumb drive into a trash can full of food, but Joss changed that bit of the plan. Instead she pocketed it and would wipe it for reuse. One less bit of toxic electronic trash floating around out there.

She made her way down the back corridors and out of the convention center, disappointed she hadn’t thought to grab a snack on her way in, since they seemed to have all been put away before dinner. A shame, she heard the walking nacos were supposed to be sinfully good.

 

**_-BH-_ **

 

 

Kim sat with Ron and Monique, all three lacking plus-one’s, and tried not to run off onto all the things that had happened in the last two days. Shego’s little stunt was just about the last straw and she was almost twitching faintly.

Because of this, it took her a moment, to realize that Ron was elbowing her in the ribs and indicating the entry hall adjacent to the convention floor.

“What do you mean that Kim Possible has a Plus One?!” came a terse argument. “Do you have any idea who I _am?!_ ”

The woman giving the argument was hard to miss. Tall, platinum blonde, and with the sort of measurements spoken of in driving rock ballads; she was in a black-and-white woman’s power suit that was clinging in all the right places and open more daringly than Monique’s own was.

And that hair made even Shego’s seem tame by comparison; platinum blonde to the verge of being white.

She wasn’t shouting, but the stridency of her argument, her statuesque figure, and the fact that, yes, most people in the auditorium _did_ know who shew was, was rabidly raising a scene.

Kim palmed her face when it dawned on her that her personal humiliations might not yet be complete.

“Is it just me,” Ron inclined to Monique as he watched KP get up to go intercept her, “Or does she seem even bigger than usual?”

“It’s the muscles,” the black woman sipped a drink lightly, studying the body language as well as she could from a dozen yards away, “Kim says her muscles always bulge when she’s P.O.ed… or aroused… but guessing it’s the former tonight.”

Kim managed to smooth over the attendant at the desk, assuring him that, whomever claimed that they were here as her plus one, it wasn’t true. She wondered if Shego had used up that slot, but figured that that would have gotten back to her _very_ quickly if it was the case.

She then lead the statuesque woman back to the table she shared with Ron and Monique, trying not to look red at the minor scene that she had caused or the glances following them across the floor. She figured Mo’ was right about people seeing them walk in together earlier, and now this particular person showing up in grand appearance, her favoured high heeled boots clacking on the floor the whole way they went.

Sitting down with a faint huff, Kim looked up, and waited for the other woman to be seated. Everyone knew everyone from the wedding, so she didn’t make any introductions.

“Ron, dinner smells fabulous,” the voluptuous woman nodded, looking at the plates and licking her lips, “One please, and a glass of white grape juice?”

“You driving?” he arched a brow, knowing that Kim’s wife usually had a taste for fine wine with fish, not grape juice.”

She cast a green eyed glace around and licked pink-painted lips, “Something like that. Now, chop chop? It was a long flight and I’m starving.”

Kim narrowed her eyes at the tone; but not in the mood to start another scene so quickly, she satisfied herself with an indignant sniff rather than dressing her spouse down. “I thought you weren’t coming. You missed the show, thought. Shego said to tell you to call her for coffee.”

“Oh? Did you two reenact the good old days for the mere mortals?” The taller woman adjusted her jacket as she sat next to her erstwhile wife.

“Something like that,” Kim sighed, shaking her head, “She showed up and gave me this… thing.”

She produced the box containing the medallion and opened it on the table, still not _entirely_ certain she should trust something made out of parts of different killer robots and electronics.

“Hey! The Moodulator!” the older woman reached out and snatched the package, running carefully manicured fingernails across the glassed surface over the electronic ink display, “She finally tore it up!”

She turned to Monique just as Ron showed up with a scavenged plate of food for her, “You know, she tried to give me this for our honeymoon, swore she knew how to turn on the ‘Green mode’ that would make Kim ho- ahem, well you know…”

She trailed off when she saw the look coming from her wife over that topic. Sighing, she set the intricate ‘KP’ medallion back into its case and sighed, “Fine… fine… I know. Bad topics to bring up in mixed company.”

The redhead nodded slightly, but felt weary that her wife sometimes only behaved to spare her feelings, not because that was how she was raised or believed.

Looking around again, the blonde reached inside of her own jacket. She withdrew an intricate black envelope with white script on it. The name was plaily visible, inscribed to Kim Possible.

“I brought my own present for you, Kitten. As a way of… apology?” she chewed her glossy pink lip, handing it across to her partner. “Look, I know you didn’t want me to take Peter’s job. You wanted me home with you. But…. The time away seems like… like it was what was needed. Our erm… project…”

Arching a claret brow, Kim took the envelope. Turning it about, she used her fish knife to slit the small sealed tab and opened the inky black envelope. Inside was a sheaf of white papers which she immediately recognized.

After all, she’d seen sets like them three times in the past year, all reading the same thing.

Taking them out and unfolding them, she read the header with all of its medical jargon:

 

[Subject 1: Kim Possible

[Subject 2: Felicia Hardy

Implantation, Subject 2: Successful.

Term: 8 weeks]

 

The rest of the text suddenly blurred away. It took her a few seconds to realize that the spattering sounds were tears dripping off the point of her chin and onto the bottom of the folded pages in her lap.

“Oh…. Oh my…. Oh my god!” The redhead finally put together, “Felicia!”

The taller woman allowed herself to be almost knocked out of her chair as Kim embraced her tightly, crumpling the carefully prepared reports behind her head and kissing her fanatically.

Ron and Monique looked on, still in the dark on the mysterious “project” that had just been brought to fruition after a year of frustrations and setbacks.

Finally, sniffling, Kim separated herself from her wife and looked at her friends. She smoothed out the papers as best as she could and laid them on the table. Then she stood up and announced to the entire class of 2007 at the top of her lungs, **_“We’re going to be parents!!!”_**

Applause quickly broke out as the news filtered around the alumni, punctuated by hoots and whistles in a few places. As it died down, Kim sat down, blushing brilliantly pink and sniffling.

“I, um… It’s been… quite a weekend,” she stammered softly, looking between her wife and her two bestest friends, “I came out here thinking my life might be going in another direction… it turns out, I didn’t know how right I was.”

Turning to her wife, looking pointedly down at her still-flat belly under the stylish white blouse with its exposed tales, “Fel… I… I was such a ferocious bitch last week. God I hope that you being here means you forgive me?”

Squeezing Kim’s hands, the notorious black cat also sniffled and nodded, “Of course it does. I think we both just needed a few days apart to get our heads on straight, and for the little one to finally decide she was ready to get born. Right?”

Monique, having a bit of familiarity with the medical form, looked first at it, and then at the two women across from her, “Wait, this just says you two, no donor or third party… does… does that mean…”

Felicia rolled her unearthly eyes and smirked, “That’s why it’s taken so long, Miss Monique. Any idiot can go out and rent a bottle of sperm. Kitten and I wanted something a little more… shall we say… a littlmore difficult to achieve. Go figure. It feels like it took five times as long.”

Touching her partner’s womb tenderly, Kim again sniffed, quietly reaffirming to herself that she needed to do better; now for all three of them, “I know it. But yeah… um… drinks on me tonight?”

 

**_-BH-_ **

****

Ron excused himself from the table without explaining that he needed to empty a leg. Kim and Felicia were both glowing, and Kim was as proud as any prospective male father Ron had ever met, and just as generous. It didn’t hurt that as word got around the bar that Middleton’s favourite daughter was a mother-to-be, that more and more free rounds came to the table.

Between the sodas, and the beers, and the wines that Monique, Felix, and Ron had imbibed on KP and Black Cat’s behalf, Ron was feeling fairly well sodden.

“Mixing beers, never fear; mixing liquor, never sicker,” he bemoaned as he exited the bathroom and down the small hallway back towards the bar.

He brushed past someone, and felt his hand grabbed firmly. Confused at the rsistance, he turned to look.

It was Joss. Again in her jacket-and-jeans clubbing attire. “You all not even going to say hi?”

The tone was a bit sharp, but she was smiling, so he hoped that she was just trying to speak past his inebriated haze.

“I didn’t know you were here!” He enthused, squeezing her hand in return where she had grabbed him with that strong cowgirl grip. “Sorry, things been pretty well tied up over there… Um… not sure I’m supposed to tell ya though…”

“It’s alright,” She smirked, rolling her moonstone eyes, “I already heard round the bar that Kim got Felicia knocked up. Bout damned time!”

They stood awkwardly a moment , people brushing back and forth past them in the small hallway to the toilets. Finally, Ron broke the silence, “Look, about last night. I get the feeling that it didn’t have anything to do with either of us.”

“That’s fine.” Joss shook her head, smiling, “I’m fine with how it turned out. Well, not with getting’ mah ass chewed, but the rest of it.”

She yanked himself forward when he started to say something, and fixed her lips to his firmly for a long moment. “Look, I’m working tonight, but… I’d like to see you again, kay? Maybe tomorrow at the reunion?”

All Ron could do was nod dumbly, tasting her lips on his past all the libations. She turned him and smacked him on his backside to get him moving, “Now get back over there… I heard from a little birdy that you get to be the god father of whatever good-slash-evil hellspawn they’ve created, and I don’t want to be on the ass end of another ass chewin’ for taking you away from the celebration.”

The hand print burned a bit more acutely on his behind from who had delivered it than from how hard it had been,, and he went back to the table with a goofy grin, feeling for once that all was right with the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Well, here it is, the “WHAT A TWEEST!” ending to this particular story. Sorry it was a little bit late and a little bit short, but while I knew how I wanted it to end… the finer details just didn’t want to gel up in my head the way I wanted it to. I don’t feel it has quite the spectacle it needs to, but I do welcome any comments. I ~might~ do a followup involving the players at the family reunion where the clan possible learns Kim and Felicia are going to be mothers, and Ron and Joss start to put things together, and who knows what else… but we’ll see. Remember as always, that Reviews = Love and Resharing is Caring!

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Chapter 1 of a 6 chapter story from the Raptor! It’s nearly finished as of the posting of this chapter (May 31 2019) So I’ll be releasing each chapter once a week till all 6 are out! Reviews = love and resharing = caring!


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